It’s around 3 or 4 a.m. and you’ve finally gotten the baby back to sleep. Gently, ever so gently, you place him back in the crib but his eyes are open before you’ve even had a chance to head back to bed! This is an episode every parent knows all too well. This rocking chair with crib is the perfect solution!
Crying babies often need to be rocked to sleep. Parents lose countless hours of rest and shut-eye because of it. But what if the baby’s crib could gently rock?
This rocking chair with crib project shows you the steps on how to build a rocking chair with crib attached to it. It’s very easy to build if you have basic carpentry skills and the required materials, hardware, and tools.
This rocking chair with crib will make life easier for all the bleary-eyed parents. And when the kids outgrow the crib it makes great yarn storage and knitting chair. Before starting the project find a mattress and cushion of your choice and adjust the plan’s dimension accordingly.
Materials:
- Pine Board Sheets
- Thin Plywood – for seating and crib mattress
- Wood Glue
- Super Glue
- Screws (not longer than the thickness of the wood and 4 pieces slightly longer)
- 4 pieces of Metal Corner Brackets
- Varnish (or Paint)
- Fabric (50×50 cm)
- Foam Mattress (42×44 cm)
- Weights (or any heavy material for gluing wood pieces together)
Tools:
- Table Saw
- Jigsaw
- Drill
- Sander (with soft and rough sanding paper)
- Brush
- Staple Gun
Building the rocking chair with crib
Before building this rocking chair with crib, check out the crib mattress that you will be using first for accurate measurements. The dimensions in this photo make a bigger than usual crib. So based on the mattress that you find, just adjust the measurements accordingly. 🙂
What’s nice about this rocking chair with crib project is that the cutting list is pretty easy to follow. The only detail we think we have to discuss in particular is the one for the sides. To create the curve at the bottom, use a long strip of scrap wood or string (around 125cm), and anchor it temporarily to the centre of the top edge of your board. Attach a pencil to the other end of your string, and trace a curve on your board as the pencil pivots around the anchor point.
Then simply follow the other measurements indicated in the sketch above to create the shape of the sides. Once everything is cut, sand all pieces, especially the edges.
Next, make a line under the centre line of the sideboards, with a distance as that of the thickness of your baseboard. This is where you will install the corner braces, as shown in the picture below.
Flip the side boards over so that the curved edge is on top. Find any object that can hold your base board flat at 20 cm height. Apply wood glue to the shorter edge of the base board and attach it to the sideboard like in the picture. Once it has dried, drill screws through the bracket and base.
Do the same for the other side. Once the wood glue is dry, ensure the stability of these three pieces by flipping them over to their right position and sitting on them.
If your three main pieces are secured, you can then proceed to attach the wings. In this example, tapes were used to hold the wings in place for 24 hours while waiting for the wood glue to dry. You can use clamps if you have some.
Then glue the shorter sides of the crib. You can use weights or books to press the pieces together as the glue dries.
After that cut the backboard piece so that it fits perfectly between your armrests. Using leftover wood, cut 7×52.5 cm pieces and round off the outer corners. See the picture below. Glue the backboard to these two pieces and leave it to dry. Once it’s dry, flip the entire rocking chair with crib sideways and attach the backboard.
Make sure the pieces of your rocking chair with crib are strongly glued to each other by sitting and leaning on the chair. Then cut 5×55.5 cm armrest pieces, with round corners, from your leftovers.
These next couple of pieces are optional – if you want to be able to use the furniture without rocking. Simple cut two pieces of the triangle and attach them to a strip of wood, as seen in the picture. Determine the distance by measuring them with the bottom of your rocking crib.
It should fit perfectly so that you can simply slide this stopper from the side with the triangles underneath the curve.
Sand the entire rocking chair with crib once more to make sure there are no rough edges and paint it to your desired finish.
For the seat, cut 3/4 plywood to 42×44 cm and round off the corners.
Glue the foam mattress with super glue or any glue you have to hold them together.
Then use staple wire to tightly cover it with your chosen fabric. The one in the picture is fake leather.
Secure the seat in place by screwing at the corners it from below. Therefore you have to make sure you have four screws that are long enough to go through the base board and hold the seat, but not too long that it also goes all the way through the plywood. You don’t want to get pierced by the screws as you sit! 🙂
Thank you vatkin for the great idea!
Here’s a quick video…
