"I was tired of my children disrupting my sleep so I built a giant bed for us all"

SWNS

A dad who was tired of his children pushing him out of bed has built a giant DIY one.  Alex Dodman, 38, built the huge three metre wide bed - double that of a standard king-size - after his second child Eddie was born.   Alex's first child Allie, now seven, is a regular in her parent's bed and the father-of-two knew it wouldn't be long until his son Eddie, now four, joined them.    The NHS ambulance service worker from Saffron Walden, Essex, said: "I had my daughter who was always jumping in the bed and then my son was born.   "I just thought it won't be long before he’s doing the same, so I decided to build it.”  The giant bed measures a massive three metres in width by two metres in length and cost just £220.  Alex said: "I made the frame from timber that cost about £120 and then bought two headboards for around £50 each."  The family bed has been a huge success with both children Allie and Eddie but also with his wife, Sarah Dodman, 38.  Alex said: “It’s been a massive success. Quite a lot of people co-sleep with their kids now so this bed has been a dream. Without a doubt my sleep has improved too.   "My wife was also on board with the idea, mainly because we both often ended up on either end of the bed with the kids 'starfishing' out in the middle of us.”  When asked whether Alex would recommend other parents to give it a go and build a giant bed the answer was a resounding yes.  He said: “It’s great because it feels like you’ve still got your own bed because of all that space.”  It already seems like Alex's idea may be catching on with viewers on social media seemingly taking to the idea.  Alex explained: “I’ve had loads of comments under the video of people tagging each other with things like ‘we need one of these’ which is great”.  Alex has a huge following online with 235.5K followers on TikTok and a further 127K on Instagram and has become DIY obsessed.  He said: “It all started with doing up my house. It was run down, and slowly, I renovated it, and then just became passionate about it.”  “I was uploading progress onto my social media story and the videos sort of grew from there really.”

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:22 Here's how I built my three meter wide super bed

00:26 If you've got tiny humans you know what it's like, no matter how hard you try at

00:30 some point they end up taking over your bed

00:32 then booting you to the edge with their stone cold feet. So now tiny human 2 had

00:36 arrived and realising he might want to jump in

00:38 sometimes too when he's a bit bigger I thought I'd try and protect my tiny spot

00:42 on the edge of the bed and also so I don't end up on the

00:44 f***ing floor for the next few years. So the only thing I could think of was to

00:47 try and build a stupidly oversized bed. The first thing I did was move out the

00:51 old one and the plan was to build a new one on this side with it facing the

00:55 blank wall opposite so I can use it as a screen for the

00:58 projector. The only place I could seem to find massive mattresses was from America

01:02 and as they were ridiculously priced and I wanted to keep the cost down

01:05 I just got another one of these ones for now which would make the bed three

01:08 meters wide in total. Again to keep the cost down I decided

01:11 just to make it out of cheap CLS stud work timber

01:14 so I went to Homebase and got some. Before I started building I just double

01:17 checked the measurements. When I put the two mattresses side by side they were

01:20 three meters wide by 1.5 meters in length. To be able to still get out the

01:24 bedroom door if I needed to I decided to build it in four different sections.

01:28 The measurements for each of the four sections were going to be 153 centimeters

01:32 wide by 75 centimeters in length. Meaning all four bits together are now

01:37 306 centimeters wide by 150 centimeters in length. I've made it six centimeters

01:43 bigger in width so I can add a three centimeter trim on each side to keep the

01:46 mattresses together. This means that when both the mattresses

01:49 are on there and I join the frame together in the middle,

01:52 when you all bundle on top, the two trims each side keep the mattresses tight and

01:56 stop them from separating. I decided to make the height 30

01:59 centimeters then I got started measuring and cutting.

02:02 I didn't do any fancy joins and just kept it simple by pre-drilling and

02:06 screwing together.

02:09 Then after not long I had the first two done and then I just did exactly the

02:13 same for the other two. To fix on the headboards I screwed on

02:17 three bits of stud work to the back of the frame so when you lean back on them

02:20 they're solid. Then I just stained the whole frame with a bit of danish oil

02:23 and then lined up the mattresses and got the headboard screwed on. Just to make

02:26 sure the mattresses don't slip down any gaps I covered over the whole top of the

02:30 frame in three mil MDF. I then screwed on the three centimeter

02:33 stud work trims on each side to keep the mattresses in place.

02:37 Now that was done it seemed a shame not to give this room a quick redecorate

02:40 so I freshened up the walls with some of this green Dulux Tuscan Glade,

02:45 hung some new blinds in the windows,

02:49 then built a new shelf with a projector out of scaffold boards.

02:54 And that's one stupidly oversized bed with projector built.

03:04 I bet I still end up sleeping hanging off the f***ing edge though.

03:08 you

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03:23 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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