Ellery's Bed, Final Post!

“This could be the last day,” I was thinking. Everything was cut and sanded. All we had to do was screw the pieces together and assemble the bed in the room. The plans recommended using pocket holes. I don’t have a jig, and I’ve never done them before. After watching some YouTube videos, we did it by hand and it worked out great. We got the 2 house-shaped end pieces put together outside and moved them up to Ellery’s bedroom. The staircase was almost too narrow and it took some finagling, but we did it. Ellery’s room is tiny and it felt like we were working in a sardine tin. We got the bed supports attached which is a job that would have been best for 3 people, but we made due with 2 people (and some stacks of Ellery’s books to hold up the supports). At one point, we knocked one of the end pieces over onto my back but it narrowly missed both of our heads thankfully.

Once we got all the side pieces together, we screwed on the slats that go under the mattress and we were done. Over the weekend I put several coats of varnish on to help keep the wood from molding and to make the bed look awesome.

In the end, building this bed was a great learning experience. Even things I thought would be simple took lots of time and required a knowledge of the area. Making this bed was a great lesson in the importance of having good relationships with Filipinos and interdependence on the body of Christ. Without the help of Kuya Veevoi, I might still be out looking for 2.5-inch screws. Without his connections from church, we might still be looking for someone to sand down our wood. Someday, if we are ever building a house in a tribe, many of the lessons learned in this project will be very helpful. Because I did this project with my language helper, I learned 60 new words in the process too. I hope you enjoyed following along with us. Now you know what we mean when we say, “It’s more fun in the Philippines”!