In the spring and summer of 2020, with my first son, Forest, on the way, I decided to make a baby crib for him. There was was debate about how long it would take (a long time) and whether it would be cheaper than buying one (it wouldn’t) but I decided that building one myself would be a good way to welcome my son into the world with love, and show him that he was a special, one-of-a-kind individual and not just another person on Earth.
Special Thanks
I had a ton of help from family and friends, and I want to start by thanking them for their contributions:
- Uncle Greg - For sharing his workspace, time, ideas, and tools
- Dad - For contributing a ton of time and ideas
- Mike Bower - For loaning me his 1930s lathe
- Julie - For helping with design, picking drawer pulls, and not hassling me about how much of my time it took
- Lou (Julie’s Dad) - For helping with one building session and the lacquering
- Mom - For some sanding, bed rail ripping, and ideas
- Aunt Deb - For positivity during construction
And also thanks to some youtube videos for design ideas
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVLPXbkY4sY - For the non rectangular ends
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Th8YCPOVE - For the drawers below
The Scrapbook
Julie made a physical scrapbook for the build that is really wonderful, so I’m going to let it do most of the heavy lifting in this post. I basically just took photos of her beautiful pages for the blog.
Are you familiar with the Fibonacci Series?
Another Kid
In 2023 we found out that our second child, Riley, was on the way. We loved the existing crib enough that we wanted her to experience it too. But I also wanted to show her that she is a unique and special individual and just another version of her brother or anyone else. So I set out to make a new set of spindles for her to put in the existing crib. This time I took inspiration from the solar system. We were reading a lot of “Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System” at the time, so it came naturally. One thing that we did differently this time, is that Julie painted the front spindles in true-to-life colors. Julie also picked out a new set of drawer pulls for Riley.
The spindles in order are:
- The Sun
- Mercury
- Venus
- Earth and its moon
- The Martian Trojans
- Mars and its two moons
- The inner asteroid belt (relatively uniform)
- The outer asteroid belt (trilobal)
- Jupiter and its four largest (Galilean) moons
- The Jupiter Trojans
- Saturn and its largest moon, Titan
- Empty space
- Uranus with its vertical rings
- Empty space
- Neptune and its largest moon, Tritan
- Pluto and eight other dwarf planets
