Our Vancouver Special: Boy’s Room

The boys room! Complete with track carpet!

Another room finally finished! The hard part about this room was fitting everything in.  It took a lot of grumbling and arguing and yelling and swearing and even a little bit of hacking too, but the boys room is now done. These bunk beds are great – sturdy, stylish, compact, and modular – but they are a pain to put together/take apart, AND there isn’t enough space in the room to move them around assembled. While trying to get them to fit, we assembled and reassembled them four times!

Kohl’s drawings, Max’s wood burned photo frame, name plates cut out of plywood by Garnet, hand carved magic wands, tree branch stump pencil holder, top turned by cousin Richard, and a big frame that needs updated photos.

In the end, we got them set up against the window and decided that was the best place for them. We congratulated ourselves on a stressful job well done, then immediately realized that a bunk bed up against a second story window is basically a death trap. However, almost as soon as we had spotted the problem, we had come up with the solution: bars on the window.

Bars on the window for safety!

Garnet had the great idea of using extra poles from the bunk bed (we had extra because we had one bed we weren’t using) to block off the window. He got a forstner bit of equal diameter to the poles and drilled holes in the top and bottom of the window frame.

Top of the window frame with bars set back to allow for blinds to be installed in front.

The holes in the top go through the drywall and a few inches into a solid beam. This way the bars can be pushed up into the top of the frame and then dropped into the holes in the bottom of the frame. It’s not too easy to get them out, but not too hard that it couldn’t be done quickly in the case of an emergency.

Bottom of the window frame. Still a little dusty from drilling out the holes for the bars. Also, please ignore the ugly, dirty metal window frame. That’s just how it is and it is actually way cleaner than when we first moved in.

It looks just fine and makes it safe for Max and Kohl, as well as Arlo, to sleep or read or play in their beds without falling out the window!

Arlo’s bed with a lenticular photo from Garnet’s maternal grandparent’s home and a print from a photo of the grain elevator on Garnet’s father’s family farm.

Arlo’s bed is still just a mattress on the floor. It’s a little tight in there for Garnet and I when we’re reading him books and getting him to sleep, but Arlo likes it and it keeps us from falling asleep in there with him.

Arlo and I made this mobile with some nature things he collected. He also painted these watercolors. They are titled, from left to right, “Pool” and “Flower.”

Arlo and I also made a mobile with fallen leaves and mini pinecones to serve as an accent over his bed. Along with his quilt made by Auntie Marilyn, his Smurf made by his Great Grandma Jo, and his dog and tractor blanket hacked by his mom, Arlo is very happy in his little bed.