ext_14473 ([identity profile] godream.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] godream 2005-08-17 12:34 pm (UTC)

At some point I'll take pictures -- it's pretty much just building a very tall, very stable table. The way I did mine involved a rectangular frame of 2x6s, a little bigger than the mattress, with an extra support running down the middle the long way, with a 8x4 piece of plywood on top, and then 4 4x4s for the legs to hold it up, and two-foot diagonally-edged chunks of 2x4 keeping the legs steady. (Maybe not a very clear explanation? -- it's easier if you see it.) In general you have to build a loft in the room it's going to be in because they're too big to actually move through the doors. I hear the tried-and-true way to do it is to build it upside-down, then turn it over when you're done, but I didn't have quite enough room to be able to do that. So instead we put together some chunks and drilled the holes for the half-inch bolts to hold the major pieces of the frame together outside, moved all the pieces in, then recruited lots of people for five or ten minutes to hold it up and stick the bolts in (six or seven in total, I think, probably could have gotten away with five), straightened the legs, put on the diagonals, and then got two of the tall guys back to get the plywood on top, which there was just barely enough room to do. (One of the six-foot-tall guys who's around this summer is always teasing about being taller than the rest of us anyways so he totally deserves to get recruited for putting stuff up high anyways, heh.)

The other thing you can try is: some of the beds consist of two wooden "ends" and the spring part that supports the mattress. I'm told sometimes people construct lofts just by building new-and-taller-and-more-stable "ends". I don't know much about how that works, though, and I'm not sure if Senior Haus has the same set of furniture EC does.

In terms of getting wood here, you really do need a pickup truck or a van or something like that, particularly for the plywood. (U-haul rents pickups, if necessary.) There are at least three Home Depots in the area, two of which are easily accessible by T and one that's better if you're going by car. There will also be lots of wood kicking around after Rush... but you might want to put off construction until IAP or some other time when you've got lots of time and energy and other people do too to help -- most of the parts of this are best done with two people, and like I said there's a time when more is necessary. :)

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