Two It Yourself: DIY Doll Bed for American Girl from Scrapwood

Let me just start off by saying that after paying $130 for a doll...I wasn't about to spend just as much on her bed. No ma'am. Sorry. Not gonna happy. Not now. Not ever. But if you've been following along on Instagram you know I have been working on a DIY doll bed for Miss Rebecca - my 5 year old's first American Girl.

I'm not really a furniture maker. And by that I mean I don't really have any clue if what I made would actually hold a human if made to scale. I mean I did make a shelf out of pallets for my bathroom so I guess I can cut and screw together a few pieces of scrap wood to make a doll bed for an 18" doll, right? Here's to hoping....

This thing doesn't look like much..and that's because it's not really. It's just a few pieces of wood I had lying around the garage put together enough that my 5 year old is satisfied that her dearest Rebecca doesn't have to sleep on the hardwood floor (gasp!) or even worse her bed. Can you imagine?!

Okay so there's not really a tutorial here so I'm gonna let the pictures do most of the talking....

I had some scrap wood sitting around from a few other projects that included pallet board, an old bedframe, fence posts, and pieces of a disassembled wood stepper. Of course you can purchase lumber if you want, but like I said I was going for free since I just shelled out three months worth of blog income on a doll.

Basically I started with the head and footboards by cutting two rectangular pieces. (I used a jigsaw for all my cutting.) They measure 11.75" x 5". I then cut the four legs. They are 10" long. Two legs attached to each rectangular piece. At this point, I asked my daughter if she knew what I was making...she said "a bridge?" Umm...no.

Okay...then I added the side rails which are each 12" long. For extra support and to make sure the doll doesn't fall through the bottom of the bed, I put in two cross bars. You can see they're not even the same type or size scrap wood.

It doesn't really matter because you're going to paint this thing up all nice and pretty and you won't even be able to tell nor will your kid care. All they're gonna care about is that they have a nice spot for their precious American Girl to rest her head of curly locks.

Once she was all assembled I started spray painting her. Mid-way through my daughter requested she be pink, so I changed courses.

I had a half used can of pink paint from painting my daughter's bedroom so I grabbed that and finished her up. I had to do three coats...but once she was done, she was a thing of beauty (even if I didn't bother to fill the screw holes...shhhh).

I had a piece of foam that was just the perfect size sitting in the basement so we used that for the mattress.

To make the doll bedding match my daughter's bedding, we used one of her pillow cases as the sheet and a sham as the comforter.

I originally planned to cut them and do some sewing to make them fit the doll bed exactly, but I actually just slid the "mattress" into the pillow case and tucked it under. The sham is just folded down. This way at least we can use them like they were intended to be used down the road :)