a new bed for madeleine

a few months ago, i saw a post on design mom about building your own toddler bed and decided that i might try my hand at it once madeleine was ready for a toddler bed.

well, madeleine started to try to climb out of her bed shortly after that, and with the baby coming, is going to get kicked out of the crib soon anyway. my inlaws came to town a couple weekends ago and my mother-in-law is an expert upholsterer, so i decided that i would make the bed and finish it while they were here. how nice of me to put them to work on their vacation, huh?

before they came, i went and bought all of the wood for the frame and assembled it myself. not that any of you really care, but if i could do it again, i would probably use 5/8" plywood instead of 3/8" plywood. here is the finished frame:

when my father-in-law got here, he agreed with me that it was still a little flimsy and we planned a few structural reinforcements to beef it up. i'm glad that my dad and my father-in-law have so much in common, including a desire to engage in sturdy woodworking (in my dad's case, read "earthquake proof") . we went to home depot and got the needed materials and then he and i made a few additions to the frame:

this is when my amazing mother-in-law stepped in to help me upholster the frame. similar to our beefing up the frame, she beefed up the upholstery and we did a few more layers of batting than the plans called for so that it would be a softer frame in case any children run into it or fall off the bed. the upholstery project actually ended up involving the whole family and i found out that randy is pretty handy with a staple gun.

and here is the finished product. i am really happy with how it turned out:

apparently we made the bed just in time because on saturday night, madeleine climbed out of her crib for the first time. it was actually a pretty traumatic experience for her, so i could probably get away with keeping her in the crib a while longer and she wouldn't attempt an escape again, but we figure that it's better to be safe than sorry and besides, she's got to switch soon regardless. she's spent the last few nights in her "big girl bed," successfully, although getting her to fall asleep has been a little bit of a process.