Back in 2015 we mashed together an Ikea Kura mid-sleeper bed with our old Kritter junior bed and some Trofast storage, to make a toddler safe bunk bed for the girls to share. Last winter, now that we no longer need to keep Lydia from climbing ladders, we upgraded it to a double bunk bed. Lydia refused to change from a junior mattress to a full size single, however, so we built in toy storage around her mattress instead.
We picked up a second Kura bed from Ikea, and cut the old one down to create a base for the new bed frame. From the older frame, which was now the bed base, I removed the two side panels so that we could access under the bed for storage.
With some of the panels and wooden pieces, I created a platform to keep Lydia’s smaller mattress in place on the bottom bunk. This sits on top of the slats and supports the trofast units (see our previous post on how we made these fit) and also, along the side of her mattress, her new soft toy storage.
We built the second Kura bed as normal, with the ladder position matching up to the ladder gap in the base frame, and then bolted the two together. We predrilled the top piece of wood, before screwing the bolts into the bottom frame – we just reused bolts from the old kura we had taken partially apart.
I bought some bias binding tape, mesh fabric, and paracord carabiners, and an old sheet to create a hanging toy storage with access portholes, which hung from the underside of the top bunk slats, while resting on the platform on the bottom slats. This is essentially a long thin 3D rectangle, with an open top and one side made with the mesh fabric. Lydia can put smaller toys in the holes, and large ones go in and out the top.
To finish off their new bunkbed, I took apart our old Kura tent and remade it with cotton fabric and elastic. We also raised up the wall pockets Georgie uses for storage to the new bed height.
Underneath the bed, the girls now have Parkla storage cases holding their blanket collection and dress-up clothes, and Sockerbit storage boxes for toys.
The girls were delighted with their upgraded bunk bed! The changes meant we had more toy storage (that soft toy storage has been SO handy), and also more space in the room to upgrade the rest of their furniture so they were making better use of the room.
If we were doing this from scratch, you wouldn’t need to build a full bed and then saw off the legs; but we did it this way round as the older bed frame had over 4 years of toddler and preschooler abuse including some drawing and sticker ‘decoration’!
