loft bed

Step 5 Drilling

Now, depending on whether or not you have to maching your own angle brackets (try not to, that step took me veritable ages) you may or may not have to drill holes in various places. Basically, you'll need to drill holes in any board you plan to drill through to another board. This prevents cracking and splitting. You'll also need to drill holes for your 11 bolts to go through:
Lay your two big sides out flat and square them off. Put them in place and measure diagonally corner to corner from all corners. Not quite the same measurement? tap the longer corners towards the center with a rubber mallet until your 2 measurements are the same.

Then measure to the middle of each board and drill a hole that will accomodate your bolt.
2 bolts hold the top of each long side at either end (8 total)
1 bolt holds the long support at the bottom to the legs (2 total)
1 bolt holds the side of the ladder to the biscuit joined top support

You'll then need to drill partway back through one side of the bolt holes so that you can countersink the nuts and screw the angle brackets in OVER the bolts

You'll also want to drill holes in the ends of the slats at the distances indicated in the drawing: 0.75" from the end and 1.75" in from the side. Ditto that for the steps.

(this part of the instruction is awfully sketchy because I didn't pick out the drill bits to use, good ol' dad left them for me.)