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With my first child outgrowing the bassinet, he needed a proper crib. During a trip to visit my parents when he was 2 months old I built one, complete with height adjustment and drawers, as most ready-made cribs did not feature drawers adn with all the rags, diapers, and baby clothes I could certainly use some extra storage in the vicinity of the crib!
Below is the final product, showing the mattress in the lower position, with the drawers being well utilized. I made the drawers full-depth so they could fit as much as possible.
Here are a few photos of the fabrication process. The garage I was working in had only basic wood working tools:
Medium table saw
Small drill press
Plenty of sand paper
Some jury rigged fixturing to ensure the holes for the bars are centered on the frame.
All frame parts drilled for bars and dowels and slotted for panels.
Some of the bars installed. The holes were made to be a close fit, such that none of the bars had to be glued in, but still fit snug and wouldn't freely rotate.
Slots in drawer front and side panels capture the bottom of the drawer without any need for glue, permitting disassembly for transport.
Example of how the corner of the frames fit together, with the slot for the panel tapering out hiddne under the joint.
Side panel frames and panels glued & clamped. Care was taken to ensure the angles were 90 deg and the frame was not a parallelogram by ensuring both diagonals measured the same.
Final test assembly before disassembly and transport back home, where I would apply a nice finish to it. Here you can also see the full-depth drawers.
I couldn't help but recall this scene from Parks & Rec when having my son hang out with me in the garage while I was building his crib.
A nice coat of varnish to protect it from all future sticky hands and projectile baby vomit
The final product after applying the finish, installing the mattress , and adding his stuffed animals, made for a very cozy crib.
Once our kid was ready to climb in and out of his bed on his own I made a side panel with notch in it so he could climb in easily on one side and sleep on the other. Adding this notch significantly complicated the otherwise relatively simple frame architecture, but the end result was worth it.
One thing that will annoy me every time I look at it however, is that when I cut the 22.5 degree angles to make the jog int he upper frame, I thought I'd make efficient sue of the material and make only two cuts, and flip the diagonal piece over so the assembled angle would be 45 degrees. However, flipping it over interrupted the very pronounced band of darker wood at the top, something that wasn't apparent until I did the final assembly, and which point I didn't have enough material left for a do-over.
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