It was time for a new bunk-bed for my girls.  They had one of those metal futon bunk-beds with a twin bed on top and a futon couch that made into a full sized bed on the bottom.  One night while talking tucking them in I realized how lumpy and uncomfortable the futon part is.  When we first got the bunk-bed we only had my oldest daughter so the thought of a cute couch/extra bed in her room sounded fun, and it was for a lot of years.  But now we have 2 girls and the futon was being used as a bed more than a couch.  So it was time to find a new bunk-bed.
I had specific things I was looking for:
we wanted wood, not metal
it needed to be solid and sturdy to last
we wanted the ability to separate the beds if we wanted to
all in the color black

All hopefully without paying $1,000 or more

Doesn’t sound too hard right? Well it was next to impossible.  One would be black, and wood, but not sturdy (per the reviews), just when I thought we found the perfect one that met all the criteria after reading the reviews discovered the beds were different heights when separated…. yea that wouldn’t go well with my OCD.  Then the next one that met everything was ALMOST ordered even until luckily we saw a review sharing how when the beds are put together there was only about 20″ between the two beds.  Not sure my 13 year old daughter (who has already claimed the bottom bunk) would like sleeping with the bed above her so close.

Finally it was time to face the facts.  There was no bed out there that fit what I was looking for.  But I could do one thing to fix it, order a bed that fits everything but the color and paint it.  So that’s what we did.

I never thought I’d be painting something brand new out of the box!  It was a labor of love let me tell you- each part had to be painted with 2 coats of a 2-in-1 sander/primer that luckily the paint woman at the store was able to tint gray for me. (it’s normally white, but since I was painting the beds black it would have taken a lot more coats to cover white primer.

Since the bed consisted of a lot of posts, and boards each one had to be painted with 2 coats, turned and repeated for all 4 sides.  Luckily the primer was a quick dry and only took about a hour to dry between each coat.  Still it was a labor of love!

The bed we got also has spindles on each of the head and foot boards so that was VERY time consuming!

Once 2 coats of primer was on, it was time for the black paint.  I did 2 coats as well to cover it really well.  The same method of painting 2 coats then turning each part until all 4 sides were done.

All in all it took me about a week- but a good 3 days of that it was raining so I wasn’t able to paint at all.  So probably about 4 days worth of painting with interruptions of kids and normal family stuff.

Even though it was a lot of work I’m so happy with the end result! It’s exactly what I wanted!