Dad Makes His 3-Year-Old a ‘VW Bus Bed’ (No, She Doesn’t Sleep in the Driveway)

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(Photo: The Treehouser)

Most parents wait until their children are teenagers to get them vehicles. This dad decided not to wait that long.

A Colorado man, who runs the blog The Treehouser under the name “DIYDad,” shares with Yahoo Makers his biggest do-it-yourself project yet: a bed in the form of 60s-style Volkswagen bus he made for his daughter’s 3rd birthday.  

“The impetus was that my daughter was going to grow out of her crib at any moment,” DIYDad says. “I’d seen some neat beds online but all were expensive.”

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This little girl’s about to get her first van. (Photo: The Treehouser)

Okay, that explains why he chose to make a bed for his daughter. But why a VW bus?

“One guy had made a pretty impressive VW bus bed that really resonated with me,” DIYDad says. “But his woodworking skills were well beyond mine, so I’d sort of put that idea aside.”

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That changed when DIYDad was perusing Craigslist’s free section — which he does a lot — and found an intriguing giveaway: a set of old VW Beetle hubcaps, a chrome bumper, and some other items from a nearby teenager. “[The teen] had finished his project and had leftover pieces,” says DIYDad. “I remembered the VW bus bed idea, contacted this kid and told him my plan, and he gave me the goods.”

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DIYDad’s inspiration: an old-school VW bus (Photo: Thinkstock)

Although DIYDad says he’s not a carpenter or even a proper woodworker, he tackled the project (which he details on his blog and an Imgur gallery).

In the interest of “saving a lot of money on materials and relying less on my own meager woodworking skills,” DIYDad started with an existing metal frame bunk bed. He then fashioned some 4x4 posts on which to rest the bed frame to give it some height (he didn’t want his daughter bumping her head). He used 2x4s to build a box around the posts to stabilize it.

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(Photo: The Treehouser)

But his clandestine project didn’t last long. “My daughter figured out way before her birthday what I was up to,” DIYDad says. So in keeping with the “If you can’t beat `em, let ‘em join you” parenting philosophy, DIYDad turned his DIY project into a daddy-daughter project, enlisting the then-two-year-old to take measurements and act as a human scale model. [She] wound up helping me throughout the process,” he says.

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(Photo: The Treehouser)

With his little helper officially on the construction team, DIYDad continued. He made a wooden frame for the body of the bus using 2x3s. The front is a curved piece of plywood; the chrome bumper is from a VW Beetle.

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(Photo: The Treehouser)

He added plywood sides and doors and cut windows. “Wheels” — plywood circles painted with a black  “rubber plasti-dip kind of stuff,” as DIYDad explains in his blog —  and the VW hubcaps followed. Next came the painting. 

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(Photo: The Treehouser)

The dashboard includes a playground steering wheel and a speedometer from a 1953 Dodge. To jazz-up the dash, DIYDad took a $3 driving toy he found, removed the insides, and installed it under the dashboard (he also added some of the toy’s flashing lights to the speedometer). “For cuteness I had her try out the steering wheel early,” he says of his daughter.

(YouTube/DIYDad)

DIYDad’s wife suggested decorating the inside of the bus with fabric squares from scraps she had lying around. DIYDad attached them to the van’s interior with a spray adhesive, and added a hammock for good measure.

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(Photo: The Treehouser)

The bus made its debut at his daughter’s 3rd birthday party. it was a hit.

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(Photo: The Treehouser)

After the party, the project was moved to its permanent location: his daughter’s bedroom. DIYDad says she didn’t sleep in it right away; she preferred her crib. But then she tried it out during a daytime nap. More naps followed. Pretty soon she was sleeping there at night as well.

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(Photo: The Treehouser)

Three years later, DIYDad’s daughter is six years old. She’s since become a sort of “DIYDaughter,” adding her own touches to the bed. “She built a bunch of tiny hammocks up one inside wall about a month ago for her stuffed animals,” says a proud DIYDad. “It’s brilliant.”

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And, yes, she still sleeps in the bed.

“The VW bus bed gets used every night, by me, too,” says DIYDad. “I climb in there to read her a story — or six — before bed every single night. And of course these days she’s reading them to me.”

So while this project started off as his birthday present for his toddler, turns out they both received something: a lifetime memory.

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(Photo: The Treehouser)

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