I knew what I wanted. Exactly what I wanted. But I had no idea how to get it. After extensive Pinteresting research, I saw a lot of people using those storage units from Target or Walmart. But at $40 each and needing 4 per bed and it still not being exactly what I was envisioning, I decided it couldn’t be that hard to DIY. Pulling my infamous line from the house… It’s just a box, right? Only this box really did end up almost as easy as I expected.

Quick stats: Twin beds are 38″x76″. I am all about making stuff easier.  So I upped it to 40″ deep – 2 long sections at 20″ – and 78″ long – broken into 3 sections at 26″. I wanted it tall enough for large totes to fit in (17″ tall) but also wanted to have the versatility of having the square cube (12″) plus a smaller box (6″) on top for smaller things like papers. So I settled on the inside box being 19″ tall.

Then I had to figure out the details. This was where I began to harness my inner Anna White thinking what would Anna do? And it’s really hard to think like that when you have no idea what she would do because you don’t have any idea how it should be done in the first place!

Easy enough to have the guys in the lumber dept rip the plywood down to 20″x8′ – yall that is seriously like my favorite thing ever! Then I finished the cutting at home. Screwed it together, easy peasy.

Now is it “correct”? I have no idea but I’m totally guessing not. I’m sure there is something about biscuits and dowels and I don’t even know what else. But i knew it works! The boys have bounced on them with no wiggle or bowing soooo… I’m thinking we are good to move on.

Now let’s not forget that the wall is not straight vertically but angled. This means a lot of adjusting to get the bedframes away from the wall enough to place the mattress and comfortably sit up without smacking the ceiling while still balancing the front space so the future curtain door isn’t smothering.

This left a space in between the beds to build some shelving for each bedroom. Which was a *whole* bunch of measure, cut, test. For each piece. Again, someone with more experience probably could have busted it out better and faster. That angled ceiling/wall was really throwing me off. I decided each of the shelving pieces needed to be on its own base frame so I built that out of 2×3’s. The drawer underneath was a whole lot easier that the shelves. Then the hall side shelves came next. Those really were “as easy as a box”.

So not professional, not perfect. Probably could have been done better in some ways (I didn’t angle the end cuts). But it is done. It works. And it looks pretty good if I say so myself!