celticdragonfly

As much as I love the idea of the woodburner and knotwork, that open space just begs to be a hidey hole. You could rig curtains and let him have Hide-n-seek space for now and a desk later.

I'd even consider painting the curtains to match a theme. Like do his whole room in Spaceships and find dark blue sheets and either sew or find the iron on patches in star shapes.

Something like that.

But then, I used to sit in my closet as a kid; I even put posters up and everything. I like hideyholes.

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They make curtains for such things. Way back when we bought the first loft bed, for Brendan, we bought a set of the curtains. Unfortunately, they were designed for another bed - one with a slide, and we figured if it had a slide we never would get him to sleep - and it didn't fit the bed properly.

The trouble is, I don't really sew. I have very few sewing skills, what few I have I learned on my own, and I do not currently have a working sewing machine. (I have a big sturdy one in its own table, and I suspect anyone with a CLUE on sewing machines could make it work fine, but I can't even figure out how to make it stay sat up in the table...)

The room it will be going in is blue with white clouds on the walls, and Winnie the Pooh curtains. Not that it has to match, but just for info.

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dartpoly.livejournal.com

I sew.

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dartpoly.livejournal.com

oh! what if you make it into a "treehouse"? bits of decorative vines, the ladders are mottled brown like a tree-trunk, and the horizontal bars have branches painted on them... with fake leaves all over. the curtain could have the "tree-trunk" on it (either painted or sewn in).

i SO have a full image of this in my head, and i'd love to help you do it!

trick is getting me out to your place on a weekend. how soon are you wanting to build his bed?

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Ah! with a nest in the crook of a tree branch!

And if it's against a wall, a stuffie bird in the nest!

Silk leaves and a hot glue gun to give the tops bars a little fluffiness. whee!

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Wow, you guys are going off in amazing creative directions I'd never thought of. Okay, probably mostly because I don't have those skill sets.

Anything we do has to be STURDY and hold up to the depradations of a very energetic, very curious little boy.

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Hee, also the joy of brainstorming is that we aren't the ones sitting there well after bedtime with our skirts hotglued to the carpet and burn marks on our fingers and silk leaves in our hair. 8-)

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Oh I wish I were closer, I could probably show you what's up with the machine. (Or at least determine it's not user error.8-) )

The pre-made curtains tend to be pricey (or at least the ones I've seen are, though really, everything at Pottery Barn is pricey.) and I'm cheap!

But measure the height from the top of the inside of the top rail to where you want the hem to fall and if that's sixty inches, the selvege can be your hem and you can staple the curtain to the bed. See? No sewing at all! (too much stagework in me, I fear)

I'm thinking he'll outgrow Pooh Bear before he outgrows the bed (says the woman who finally painted over her son's nursery mural now that the "baby" is almost six) so yeah, I wouldn't go Pooh.

What does he want? Cars? Batman? Fish? Fish would be fun. There are shower curtains with tropical fish and the cling stick wallpaper cutouts. All you have to do is line 'em up.

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Well, if you're ever down this way, let me know. Frankly, I'd give it away. My mom recommends that one of these days I go buy a new but very basic sewing machine. Then I might could get lessons. I really would like to learn - I want to learn patchwork quilting.

Hm, wondering if stapling would be better - hard to pull out, but then you're stuck with staples in the wood - or possibly put velcro inside the cleat rails, and velcro on the curtains, but then they yank them down.

I think he'll outgrow anything really kidlike before he outgrows the bed - this is going to be a regular twin, not a toddler bed or anything. At the moment he's only 2 and still speech delayed (although we're making progress), so I have no idea what he'd want. I don't think he'd know what he'd want. Shower curtains is an interesting possibility. Although with not wanting him to outgrow it early, and not knowing what he'd want, I tend to go with ideas more vague, like knotwork and such.

Definitely not cars or batman. Not anything that's a specific character, really. (Although I could have gone with Pooh stuff. Depending on the stuff) I try to avoid character stuff, "buy me this shirt with DisneyCharacter on it!" No.

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You know, you might go block colors.

We picked up a kiddie rockingchair with a ghastly paint job and repainted it in red blue and yellow. The back rails and rocker rails are red, the seat and crossbars are blue, everything else is yellow so no two sections that touch each other are the same color. Very bright, very chipper, very kid-like.

Then if you choose to do the bedsheet curtain trick, either with a stable gun or the tension rod, as previously suggested, bright red or blue sheets are in the outlet store's bargain bin pretty often.

Or four different shades of blue? Navy, royal, bright, and pale? Can't get any more "boy" than blue and it'll meld with the curtains until Pooh gets old and is replaced with something less toddler and more colt.

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Hm, just got off the phone with my dad and a similar discussion. Maybe do the ladder rails in ascending shades of blue, darker to lighter? And maybe the verticals green. Maybe some yellow somewhere, he likes that color.

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If you do the stars thing, you could do stars or a moon in yellow.

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coalboy.livejournal.com

Not DisneyPooh, ShepherdPooh, the *real* one! I don't think he'd outgrow the Shepherd one so quickly.

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kattelyn.livejournal.com

Uhh, as much as I'm probably getting myself into trouble with this, I do sew... sorta.. and I need practice making curtains, and I'm pretty handy with a sewing machine.

As far as decorating the bed, I haven't read the entire thread but how about great big primary colours with letters and numbers and stuff stenciled all over it? like each piece of wood be a different BRIGHT primary colour. Red, blue, yellow, you get the idea. Down bottom, attach a board along the entire back of the lower part, and get some of that paint that turns walls into a chalkboard, and have that be a little play area with a chalkboard and chalk and stuff. Boys like BRIGHT primary colours, and so do toddlers... so have fun.

Here's an idea. Go get some water based paint and get them involved! Handprints, and next to that stencil in the date and whose hand it was! Everybody can get involved! Mama's hand, Daddy's hand, Maggie's hand, Jaimie's hand!

*grins* tada, instant heirloom!

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I think I'm getting pretty hooked on the design idea lower in the comments of doing it deep blue with stars and moons, using some star and moon sheets Brendan had, and generally doing a stars and rockets design decor for his room.

But I'd love to take you up on help making curtains - possibly I'll find some calico with star patterns on it, once it's built.

And I DO like the idea of the chalkboard! Thanks. I'll talk to them about that when I go get paint.

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carbonelle.livejournal.com

I sorta-kinda sew. That is, I can use a needle and thread to sew a decent, if unlovely seam. And while my mother sewed sheets and curtains that way (as a child! Of four!) I'm not up to that level of snuff.

If I were going to make my own "custom" curtains for that bed, therefore, I'd buy a pair of cute twin sheets and staple them (folded over as necessary) to the inside of the bunk with a staple gun.

I like the space theme, because you can get those cool glow-in-the-dark solar system sets to glue to the ceiling!

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Oh my gosh, I used to do that too! I thought I was just weird. Well, I am, but anyway...

I had a loft bed, too, and the space under it was half taken up (long-ways) by a bookshelf and a chest of drawers. The other half was a perfect hideout, that my mom couldn't get into!

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ciorstan.livejournal.com

Ikea has a pine loft bed similar to this for a lot less, even with shipping.

http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?topcategoryId=15558&catalogId=10103&storeId=12&productId=42720&langId=-1&parentCats=15558*15617*15619

Admittedly, it isn't as nice a piece of woodwork as the original bed you posted. On the other hand, my kids have been sleeping on a separated set of Ikea's Fjelldal bunks for almost ten years, so I know from first hand that their products are sturdy, if not beautiful.

An additional advantage to the Ikea loft bed is that they also sell a *desk* (and drawers, computer friendly) designed to fit in that loft bed frame. I think that's marvelously clever of them.

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I don't think it's going to cost us that much to build this bed. It should be less than that. And I am rather twitchy about Ikea beds, especially slat bed. (This bed will have a solid bunk board) Karl had an Ikea slat queensize bed when we got together, and the slats used to shift and dump me halfway to the floor WAY too often. I do NOT like that feeling. It was finally a matter of "get rid of the bed and we can just sleep on the cheap mattress only on the floor, or I'm not sleeping with you." This one will be STURDY. I hope.

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callibr8

A tension rod could hold up a lightweight curtain for the "hidey-hole" area.

Old bedsheets make quite decent curtains, sometimes. Find a nice print or solid flat sheet at your local thrift store, use the top edge fold of the sheet to shirr onto the curtain rod, measure the length you need, then snip an edge and rip across, staple if you're concerned about raw edges (though percales usually don't fray much), and you're good to go.

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I don't think I'd use staples for the bottom edge, sharp if they catch, but could use iron-on hem stuff (sorry, don't know the technical term!) for a quick and easy edge.

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callibr8

Someone else had suggested the staples. I agree that some of the "stitch witch" (as I think it used to be called) would be a better choice. Or masking tape. Or duct tape. Anyway - there are many non-sewing alternatives.

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Staples work well at the top, to hold the cloth up, but I wouldn't use them for hemming. That was all! :)

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msminlr.livejournal.com

Stitch-Witchery

Actually there are several brands of iron-on hemming tape.

I was thinking of decoupage: Jamie picks the illustrations and you use clear acrylic "enamel" from Hobby Lobby to glue them on and seal over them.

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Both of my boys have raised beds. We got the first one for our elder son when the younger one outgrew his toddler bed. We moved the younger boy into the standard twin and got a raised bed for the elder boy. It was high enough to put cushions underneath for a wonderful cubby hole area. Some time later, he needed a desk and there wasn't really enough room to add a desk to that room. So we got him the IKEA raised double bed with desk underneath. It is rather close to the ceiling (maybe 18" between ceiling and mattress), but he loves it. Something like this one:
http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?topcategoryId=15558&catalogId=10103&storeId=12&productId=47120&langId=-1&parentCats=15558*15617*15619
I can't find a photo with the desk. It is a nice one - shelves that fit nicely on the back of the desktop and under the bed.

So, this bed will likely work for many years. So you need to consider what you do in terms of decoration and make sure that he won't outgrow the decoration. I'd stick with fairly simple colours on the bed itself, and add easily removable decorations. The curtains are a great idea. We did the staple thing and it worked quite well. The staples were relatively easily removable later with a screwdriver. We stapled to the inside of the bed frame so that the staple holes aren't obvious now.

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archangelbeth

I'd just seal it, or paint it some reasonably nice color, and then... whenever he gets stickers, let/encourage him to stick them on His Bed.

We have a Brio table which is the Sticker Location. It keeps the things from getting stuck to any other furniture (save, pre-Briotable, the insides of certain cabinet doors), keeps them from being stuck on skin till they wear out and turn into curled trash that cannot be thrown away while she's anywhere around (and even then, she might wonder where it went), and satisfies her need to Horde Everything.

Little year-of-the-dragon kid...

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That's a great idea; I stuck most of my sticker collection to the back of the furniture under my loft bed. My only regret was when we finally gave the furniture away when I was a college student--I lost my stickers! Waah!

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I have a set of moon and star wallpaper cutouts I haven't put to use yet, if you want them.

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Hm, we could do a dark blue and make a night sky design?

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That would be fun--if you got real ambitious, you could do actual constellations on the ceiling.

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Hm, we have that popcorn crap on the ceiling, so I don't think we could put them up there like you have.

If I was *really* creative, I could shade the thing ... light blue on one end to dark blue on the other, put clouds and rainwbows on one side and stars and moon on the other... nah, that's probably too cutesy.

However, we do have a set of star and moon sheets that Brendan used to use, those could become his... IIRC they're navy and gold on white, and I think we have an adult set around that's white on navy - maybe I decide to sacrifice those for curtains with a tension rod. Although they're t-shirt weight jersey material, not sure they'd have enough drape for curtains. I'm sure we can find appropriately starry fabric for that, though.

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I've got a sheer black fabric printed w/ gold stars, leftover from a Halloween sale last year. There might be enough for curtains or something, if you go w/ that theme. Or you might think black's a little too gothy. :)

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Hm. I can definitely see going with a stars-and-moons theme. We could do some black. I end up thinking that if I really want to do a night sky thing it ought to be black, not blue - but I'd rather do it in a deep blue. I dunno, black just doesn't feel right for the whole bed. I guess it's night sky at a little boy's bedtime, not later. :-P But we could do something with some black.

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Oh, yeah, definitely blue for the ceiling--if you paint the whole room black you'll turn him into Voltaire. ;) I just happened to think of this fabric I had.

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Oh, I dunno if we'll paint the ceiling. But I'm thinking paint the bed frame a deep blue, put stars and moons stuff on over that. Use the stars and moon sheets, maybe get a comforter.

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Ooh, I'm liking it!

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carbonelle.livejournal.com

You can purchase glow-in-the dark paint, so that you can paint your own stars on the ceiling if the stickers won't work.

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You can get plastic, glow-in-the-dark stars. Use Sticky-tack to hold them onto the ceiling. It worked on ours and we have the stucco, popcorny stuff, too. Some fell down eventually, and we just used new Sticky-tack to put them back up.

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callibr8

Particularly nifty if done in glow-in-the-dark paint. I've seen such. Very impressive.

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tmc4242.livejournal.com

You have friends with access to 1.) astronomy software that can present a pretty good rendition of the real sky, and 2.) a snazzy presentation projector.

With suitable covering to keep the paint off the electronics this could be used to project an image that could be used as a guide for painting stars on the ceiling ( and maybe walls... ) with glow in the dark paint.

Just a thought.

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