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

[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.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

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.