Loft bed, decorating ideas solicited

[celticdragonfly]

Maggie now has her own room, with Brendan's old loft bed in it. She is sleeping there part time, and part time in the big nursery bed. The goal now is to get Jamie his own bed and move the big queensize into the guest room.

He loves to climb up into Maggie's loft, so we were thinking a loft bed for him too. Or possibly bunkbeds if that was easier to find, although the 2nd bed seems silly. We went shopping Sunday and did a bunch of hunting online too.


OW. ow ow ow. My goodness how expensive.

So now we're looking at building our own to this set of plans --->

I'm going to get help building it. What I'm wondering about is decorating it. Karl's first reaction was oh, just leave it plain and seal it. And we could do that.

But there's so FEW places I can put ornamentation in his life. There's not much in the way of "little boy decor" I'm going to want around. I can't get him beautiful fancy outfits, sigh. No pretty barrettes or hairbands. I don't want him to think I care more about his sister because she gets all the ornamentation.

So I'm wondering about decorating it. I could get out celtic knotwork designs and the woodburner, and do it up like I did my spinning wheel - probably the slowest option, but it would be nice. I could paint it a solid color, a nice cheery blue maybe. I could paint it more than one color - one for the frame and another for the ladder? Or I could paint it solid and then paint some kind of decorations on it, or decals or they do those wallpaper cutout things, or... what?

I'm hoping to get a run in to Hobby Lobby, without the kids, so I can poke around and look for ideas.

And I would really love suggestions, please.

Comments

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

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.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

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.

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

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.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

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.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

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

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

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