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

[xinef.livejournal.com]

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.