Thread: WIP - Twin bed(s) for my not so little girl(s)

I've been wanting to build a couple of "castle" beds for our twin daughters Emma and Madeline ever since ewjsmith on our Canadian Woodworking forum posted this photo of the one he made for one of his daughters:

I thought I had some time to get around to this but both the girls are growing so fast - 3 in a couple of weeks! - and just the other day while visiting another pair of twin girls for a play date Emma remarked that she wanted "big girl bed" like her friends slept in!
So that moved the time table up a lot. Rather than build toddler beds for the girls SWMBO and I decided that twin size was the way to go. Unfortunately when we started playing with the dimensions we found there was no way we were going to get 2 twin beds in their current room. So we're moving them into what was our spare/guest room. However, it's still not large enough for 2 castle twin beds! Oh dear!! The compromise is that I'll build Emma's bed as a regular twin but paint it in girly colours and decorate it in Princess stuff and see how that goes over. Then when Maddy's surgeons give her the go ahead to use a twin instead of a crib I'll use the "market research" gathered to make any changes necessary to the next bed.
Well here we go..........


By a happy coincidence 1/4" scrap under the legs of my B&D workmate brought the mitre saw up level with the top of the work centre! That gave me a 6'7' infeed table..... alright!! A new Ridge Carbide blade in the King 12" dscms made beautiful cuts that a glue-line rip blade would be jealous of.
Maple for the main rails and the headboard upper and lower rails and poplar for everything else. No point in using more figured stock as it's all going to be painted.

Got all the board stock rough cut to length and width. Then I took the lot down to The Carpenter's Square and jointed one side and one edge. No place else to put it all but they are all sitting on strips to keep them off the rubber mats. Soon as the planer is on it's new stand I'll thickness them and get some final dimensioning done.