# Eastern Red Cedar Baby Crib



## Jakec7051 (Dec 8, 2016)

So this is my first post on this forum. So as we anxiously awaited the arrival of our first child. I had roughly 900 Bft of cedar logs sitting at my parents house drying out. I took the logs to a local sawmill and the owner gave me a heck of a deal on sawing them for me. $200 for the cedar logs and and about 400 bft of black walnut to be sawed out. 
My wife looked at me and asked what I was going to do with all that lumber. I honestly had no clue. She hinted around at a baby crib. So I obliged her and started searching through the ole interweb. I finally decided on a set of plans from Pinterest. 
As I got started on cutting out the lumber my pappaw offered to me to use his planer as I didn't have one at the time. This was my first carpentry project that I have ever attempted. 
Between having 4x4's sawed out. I had everything else sawed in 1 inch thick boards and as wide as they could get them. Some boards came out 16 inches wide. 
The first picture is the finished project. I made it to where it would break down into five pieces the headboard and footboard each side and the the mattress support. It is very simple to break down. 
All in all the build was very fun and interesting. I had 3 generations of my family helping build it. My wife and her father helped as well. But it was a very through build that I saw from beginning to end from cutting the trees down to hauling them to be sawed out and finally assembling the final product. 
So as of yesterday at 1:38 pm we became parents of a beautiful baby girl that will soon get to sleep in the crib that I made for her. Now just to figure out how to build a rocker glider for my wife to use. 
If anybody wants more details on how I assembled this. I will be glad to pass on my experiences and struggles that went through. 
Thanks 
Jake


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## GROOVY (Apr 27, 2008)

congratulations, good job on crib too


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## m.n.j.chell (May 12, 2016)

Even if your baby is a miniature Hulk, it's not getting out of THAT crib. 
Looks safe enough ... and it's impossible to make cedar look bad. One of the prettiest woods.


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## Jakec7051 (Dec 8, 2016)

Red cedar is really the only wood I have experience with. I've just got done building a small table for our daughters room. I'll show a pic of it. And I've built a few gun cabinets out of some cedar an old farmer gave me for some work I did for him. He told me his father had the lumber sawed out in the 1930' or 40's and it was some of the most beautiful stuff with the cross hatches in it from the saw blades.


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## Hooked (Nov 1, 2016)

Great looking projects with cedar, guys!

A question for the guys that have worked with cedar....I've got a couple of thousand board feet that my dad had cut a number of years ago. I'd love to build some stuff out of it, but the cedar smell is too strong for indoor projects, I think. Did you use a different species of cedar or will putting a finish on the cedar eliminate that smell?


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## Jakec7051 (Dec 8, 2016)

Hooked said:


> Great looking projects with cedar, guys!
> 
> A question for the guys that have worked with cedar....I've got a couple of thousand board feet that my dad had cut a number of years ago. I'd love to build some stuff out of it, but the cedar smell is too strong for indoor projects, I think. Did you use a different species of cedar or will putting a finish on the cedar eliminate that smell?




Personally I love the smell of cedar. My wife's grandfather pulled the drywall out of his basement and lined the walls with cedar he had. If you put a couple of coats of polyurethane on it. Typically it tones down the smell, but you still have a hint of the aroma of the cedar that lingers around. But I've never fully eliminated the smell.


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## trentwilson43056 (Nov 10, 2015)

Beautiful Jake,the crib and the table.Pretty lucky kids.


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## Jakec7051 (Dec 8, 2016)

Thanks Trent. Hopefully she will enjoy this stuff as much as I enjoy building it. Now all I have left is to build a bench or chair to go with the table. I know it will be a few years before she gets to using it to play with. Has anyone built small chairs or benches for children?


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## Brian T. (Dec 19, 2012)

Jake, that's wonderful. Congrats on the family start, too.
Have you got the time to make a matching change-table for babe messes and clean-ups?
Mattered more than the crib on our backs! Just because the kids are little doesn't mean
that they have to be 6" off the floor.
The only planning part was a table top at elbow height for a 5'8" Mom and a 6' 2" Dad.
Was ridiculously easy to sell.


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## Jakec7051 (Dec 8, 2016)

Jake, that's wonderful. Congrats on the family start, too.
Have you got the time to make a matching change-table for babe messes and clean-ups?
Mattered more than the crib on our backs! Just because the kids are little doesn't mean
that they have to be 6" off the floor.
The only planning part was a table top at elbow height for a 5'8" Mom and a 6' 2" Dad.
Was ridiculously easy to sell.


Rob I would love to do the changing table. But my wife repurposed a old dresser by repainting it. Which worked out great. We dated the dresser to 1953. It had a bus schedule inside of it from Pennsylvania. How it made it to Tennessee I have no clue. But it was obvious it wasn't strapped to the top of any ole car and drug around in an episode of Beverly Hill Billies


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## pinky (Jul 14, 2008)

Wow, what a great story. Congratulations one the little one. I bet you can't wait for her to be old enough to be able to explain the whole story behind the crib.


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