A new bed

Adeline decided her doll Anna needed a baby bed and then came up with the idea that it would be much more fun to make one than buy one.  (Surprisingly, this needed no encouragement from Dad) So her and Eric set about designing a simple baby bed that they could make together as her first woodworking project.  Eric tried to come up with a design that he could accomplish with the very limited amount of tools he had brought with us.

They started out Saturday morning by heading to Baumarkt (the German version of Home Depot), which has a pretty thin lumber selection.  After finding some pine boards that would pass and picking up various other supplies, they headed home to hurry up and start cutting. It started to rain halfway through the cutting portion, so they had to move everything under the balcony. 

In Germany, Sunday is considered a rest day, and you are not allowed to do anything noisy outside on Sundays (grass cutting, power tools, tree trimming, etc.)  So Adeline and Eric had to make sure they did all of their cutting on Saturday in order to save the quieter activities like sanding for Sunday. Shortly before sundown on Saturday night, the last pieces were cut.

On Sunday, a lot of hard work was done sanding all of the pieces down and preparing them for painting and staining. Adeline thinks cutting is much more fun than sanding.  

The next weekend was spent putting on multiple coats of paint.  Finally, the last major step in this project of stenciling the design was ready to be executed.  There they ran into a little problem that the German tape they used for masking is quite a bit stronger than the American version. After pulling away the mask, there was a ton of sticky residue left behind. After a few hours of hard elbow grease and plenty of WD-40, the bed was finally ready for assembly.  

On Good Friday morning, the pair finished their big project. Adeline is very proud of her new self-built baby bed. 

Emmie quickly gathered her baby blankets to share with Adeline. The two of them made the bed together and then placed the bed next to Emmie's baby doll bed. It was a restful night for everyone.