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

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

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.

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

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. :)

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

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.

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

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.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

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.

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'm liking it!

[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.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

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.