Baby Furniture Plan and Ideas

Make no mistake. You, the parents, are the one who will benefit the most from you completion of these projects. The newborn baby won't notice. You'll find it interesting that such a little creature that does nothing but sleep, eat and poop will impact your life so dramatically. As a matter-of-fact, those very activities of a baby are what create the problems you can solve.

Sleep.

The baby in your life spends a lot of time sleeping. He needs a place to do it that is convenient for the parents. A bassinette is just what you will need in the beginning. To make a woodworking project a bit more challenging, I suggest you build one that is height adjustable. It can be high so you don't have to stoop over to put the baby down or pick the baby up. It can be low so you don't have to get out of bed to deal with the baby at night.

You may want to have a cradle instead of, or in addition, to a bassinette. Babies like to be rocked. If rocking a baby in a cradle will cause your baby to stop crying at night, you and your spouse will l-o-v-e a cradle. You will find a great range in the complexity of cradle plans. If you are a beginning woodworker, you can find cradle plans that are simple and relatively easy to build.

Babies grow up extraordinarily fast. About the time they start to sleep all night, so that they quit making your nights miserable, they learn to crawl and walk so that they can start to make your days miserable. About this same time, you will find that they are too big for their bassinette or cradle. Also, in order to be able to get a little tiny bit of sleep-in time on weekends, you will want your baby's bed to resemble a cage. So you need a crib. (I didn't really mean the part about the cage.) The purpose of the bars on a crib is safety. They keep the baby from falling out of bed.

A crib can be a great woodworking project. You can get special plans for cribs that turn into small beds when your baby outgrows the need for bars.

Eat.

When babies are not sleeping, you will find that they spend a lot of time eating. By the time that they can sit-up by themselves you will want to have completed their high chair. Actually babies generally never want their food; they only want everyone else's. It's a law. So the sooner you can strap them into their own little self-contained chair and table, the better for your sanity. Of course when you do, they still will only eat part of their food. The rest they distribute around the high chair in order to help you have something else to do. A dog works well in this situation.

As they grow, a booster seat is another simple project to consider.

Poop.

You've no doubt heard the expression, "whatever goes up must come down". With babies, it's "whatever goes in must come out". If babies are not sleeping or eating, there's a great chance they're pooping. Dealing-with-poop is one of a parent's most entertaining pastimes. I guarantee that you'll love any woodworking project that will help you with this aspect of parenting!

A changing table is a good project. Another is a chest of drawers that is the height of a changing table. I like this idea, because a chest of drawers is a legacy that a baby can continue to use as he or she grows into adulthood.

On of the most rewarding days as a parent is when your toddler says, "I went potty on the potty all by myself". Make the potty seat early. I guarantee that you don't want to be the one to delay that day's arrival.