Our New Beds!

We live in a small 2 bedroom apartment right now. However, we will be moving into an even smaller two bedroom apartment (graduate student housing) in the fall. In fact, it is only 594 square feet! So, in preparation for that, we are scaling down and thinking vertical. One of the ways we are doing this is by turning the boys bunk beds into loft beds! This will give them more floor space to play. Collin is very good at designing and manufacturing. He gets creative. Here is the process in pictures...

This is what we started with...

Magnus and Collin are marking where to drill the holes...

Collin is working on the cross pieces on the backside of the beds...

Me and my little helpers! The boys really did a great job helping. It's important for us to have them help with projects and such so they can see the work that is involved.

Thane really got into it. He is a hands on type of guy and said he "really likes working with tools". He also seems to have a knack with math. Maybe we have some sort of engineer on our hands!

Magnus is using the socket wrench to tighten down the nuts...

Almost done! Well, almost. At this point we still had the ladder on the other side and the safety boards, to prevent falling out, to do. Oh, and we had to turn it around, but we won't go into that part!

Ta da! This is Thane's bed. I let the boy's pick out their own fabric for the curtain. Their dresser and some shelves with their toys are under this bed.

This is Magnus' bed. Their bookshelf and more shelves with toys are under here.

The beds turned out great and are very solid! The boys have enjoyed sleeping up high and having their own personal spaces down below.

Collin and I were feeling left out. We wanted to sleep up high too! Not really. But Collin did make us a bed too. Again, we are thinking vertical. We needed a place for storage since we will not have much in the new place, so we created storage under our bed! Lots of storage!






To give you some perspective, the legs stand 30 inches high! The top of the mattress is as tall as Thane! Our dressers now make nice bedside tables! Oh, and it's a King size mattress! I am so excited about having a King! I need space when I sleep and don't like bumping into Collin, or having him bump into me. Collin was having coffee with a friend he hadn't seen in over a year and happened to mention our bed making plan. This friend just happened to have an extra King size mattress in his house and offered it to us! For FREE! They only used it for 3 years and it is in great shape! God blesses us in odd ways like that all the time. The bed isn't very pretty, but it is very functional! We plan on making a skirt to go around it and will buy a nice bread spread. We'll make it look as pretty and romantic as possible. I am grateful to Collin for all of his hard work!