My son has been begging for a double decker bed for months so he can have more floor space in his room for his toys, so I finally bought a mountain of heavy pine lumber and a box of structural lag screws to build one myself. The layout plans online made it look like a straightforward afternoon project of just cutting a few posts and bolting the frames together. What a total lie. Trying to get two massive wooden bed platforms perfectly square and aligned by yourself is pure frustration.
The biggest issue right away was that the long 4 by 4 support posts from the store were slightly warped. When you try to bolt a horizontal mattress rail to a post that has a slight twist in the wood, the whole frame pulls crooked, making the upper deck completely unstable. I had to use every heavy duty clamp I owned just to force the thick timbers straight against the corner brackets while trying to drive the massive screws in before the wood split right down the grain.
The real breakdown happened when I went to lift the heavy upper bunk frame onto the top of the main support posts. Trying to hold a heavy wooden platform perfectly level above my head while trying to line up the pre drilled dowel pins with the holes in the posts took way too much muscle. My arms were shaking so bad from the weight that the upper frame slipped and gouged a giant scratch right across the bedroom drywall, which completely ruined my mood.
The double decker frame is securely bolted together now and the structural guard rails are locked tightly onto the upper bunk. The built in ladder doesn’t wobble at all when you climb up the rungs, and both wooden mattress platforms sit perfectly level without any creaking or loose shifting. My son has already thrown all his pillows onto the top mattress, so the bunk bed is fully finished now.