We live in a very very very small apartment with 3 kids, and we manage to make it work, without feeling too cramped. Part of that is by figuring out creative solutions to make the place as user friendly as possible, and to try to streamline the furniture to maximize the space most effectively.
We have 3 main rooms in our home- the living room/dining room/kitchen, the main bedroom, and the smaller kid's bedroom. The smaller kid's bedroom used to be a storage room and the kids all bunked with us. Then we cleaned up and
decluttered the storage room and turned it into a usable kids' bedroom.
But that was only phase one.
Still crowded and cramped.
On Monday, we completed phase 2 of the project (and it only took us 1+ year after completing phase 1! lol- how efficient!) and made a loft bed for the kids' room.
The reason for the loft bed is such:
With such a small room, and such a small house, space is a premium. Using vertical space is one of the best ways to do this- why take up room on the floor when you can use up empty room on the wall?
By making a loft bed, we now have the mattress high off the ground and the kids can play in the space underneath. We also have another mattress that we can put down over there should we have guests or should the kids decide that they no longer want to sleep on the same mattress. (They like each other's company while they sleep at this stage in their lives.)
By making the loft bed, we've effectively doubled our usable space in the bedroom. See the difference between this and the previous one?
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The completed made from scratch loft bed. |
Because wood is expensive where we live, this project cost us 165 dollars, but if you'd buy the same wood from Home Depot or a lumberyard, it would probably cost you around 50 dollars.
While 165 dollars is a lot of money, its at least half or a third of the price of a purchased loft bed where we live. And the added benefit is that because this room is narrow, with a low ceiling to boot, we needed the bed to be a certain dimension, and we were able to build the bed exactly to those specifications.
Here's how we built the bed, including plans so you can build it as well.
It took us approximately 5 hours, including mistakes we made and needed to fix. I've included details about the errors we made so you can learn from them- no need to reinvent the wheel.
(P.S. I drew the plans up, purchased the wood, measured the wood, and then Mike cut the wood. I positioned the wood and held it in place while Mike drilled and then screwed in the screws with the drill. It was a team effort, but mostly me. :-D Just feel the need to take credit and give credit where it's deserved. I'm just not in any of the pics since I was the one snapping them, not because Mike did it all.)