It’s hard to be the youngest AND an old soul. Our sweet Corra is both, poor thing. One day, not too long ago, she was lamenting the fact that she didn’t get any big milestones until she’s 10 (dying her hair and getting an MP3 player)…and that’s over a year away. Woe is her, indeed. Well, maybe a bed upgrade I suggested. Neil had made her bed and she had been sleeping in it since she out grew her crib. Funny thing…She’s grown a bit and the bed was getting worn out. The idea of a grand, new bed immediately dried her tears and shushed her whining. Neil was brought in to consult and after much time looking at all the loft bed options the internet had to offer…and Naomi deciding she wasn’t about to be left out of that awesomeness…we completely re-did the girls sleeping arrangement and overall room. They are all thrilled. And I’m grateful yet again for my resident partner in crazy. He rocks my socks off.

These before pictures are a tiny bit misleading. Up until a few days prior to the picture Layna’s bed had been flipped upside down so it was a short loft bed with space underneath. Corra’s bed was the one closest to the window. Naomi got the room-in-a-bed (our nickname for the monolithic thing. It has a desk and clothes storage all built in) that my mom didn’t need when she moved here from New York. The plan had been for Layna to take over that monstrosity when Naomi took over Garyn’s room (when he gets booted in two years after he graduates from high school). So when these shenanigans went down Layna got to take over the room-in-a-bed earlier than anticipated and was mighty pleased. Corra and Layna both stored their clothes in the closet and shared the shelves while Naomi had her stuff in the room-in-a-bed. Got it?

With some inspiration from the internets, Neil got to work over-building the new sleeping arrangements. We both agreed that there needed to be no question as to it’s stability and it is super solid. Like he and I can hang on it at the same time, solid. The cool thing is that the old beds were able to be re-purposed quite a bit, so the whole project was actually super cheap.

My husband and I have quite a bit in common. One of which is the fact that if we are really into a project and can see all the steps to completion, we pretty much can’t stop ourselves from just finishing it. It’s why we re-did our kitchen counters in a weekend. This double loft bed, room upheaval, massive switcheroo happened over a weekend. I was super cranky because I get cranky when we move stuff around a lot…but like always, once it was done I was in love.

The after pictures are a bit misleading, too. Naomi has now taken over the closet and we built a desk and shelving into one side of it. Corra’s clothes are hanging under her bed where we have also added a desk. She wants to get a pet tarantula to keep on it (Naomi says absolutely not). And the picture doesn’t show very clearly that we were able to just move Naomi’s hanging chair to hang off the bed chain (over-building for the win). Neil is currently researching making similar chairs out of para-cord for the little girls. Layna realized early on that her desk desperately needed a chair. So she asked her dad nicely and he delivered with an adorable chair (perfectly sized) made entirely from her old bed. I helped with the painting and she is over the moon about sitting at her desk to do her work. She is now demanding a computer to type on, but that’s another story.

Naomi got a new mattress when she got her room-in-a-bed. The other three children in our family had been sleeping on embarrassingly old and terrible mattresses since before we moved here. Well, No More! New beds = new mattresses! [side note: Garyn didn’t get a new bed, but he did decide to completely rearrange his room. I really need to get pictures of it for posterity.] Amazon came through and they are all happily getting used to the new foam mattresses. It has all worked out even better that we hoped…We love it when a project comes together so beautifully.