Sleeping Arrangements -- Triple Bunks!

It was over a year ago when I had a panic attack!  My kids were 4 1/2 years old and still in toddler beds!!  I could NOT have my 5 year old babies sleeping in toddler beds!  Plus, it was ridiculous how giant they were for those teeny beds! 

When we moved into this house (almost 3 years ago…) we had a plan for sleeping situations.  We have 4 bedrooms downstairs and a game room upstairs.  The plan was to give each girl a room downstairs and convert the upstairs to the boys room.  But like with any good plan I make, it crumbled…. To convert upstairs we had to build out the attic, add a bathroom, raise the roof line, and more. And trust me when I say it was going to cost a fortune!  Now, I do not mind spending a fortune on anything, but my sweet frugal husband said something about not recouping our money… something, something, something…. no way!  Soooooo, back to the drawing board… How am I going to fit 5 kids in 3 rooms?!?

After lots of thought and talking, I came to the realization that I was going to have to settle on the dreaded bunk bed…  I DETEST bunk beds!!!  The idea of crawling up to the top and changing sheets chills me to the bone… But there just was no other way!  

The 3 kid bedrooms are REALLY small and if you have ever looked into buying bunk beds you know they are REALLY big.  It would have been okay for the boys room, but the girls room would literally just be 2 sets of bunk beds…  One day, Stephen came to me and said he found plans for a triple bunk online at The Handmade Dress Blog…  I checked them out and they were perfect!!  

He downloaded the plans, made a few tweaks of his own and voila!  Problem solved!!

Here's how it went down...

1.  Clean out beastly guest room….  This is how my room looked with all of the junk from guest bedroom in it!

2. Guest room cleaned out.

3.  Buy lots of wood.

4.  Paint room..  (Sherwin Williams 6821-- Potentially Purple)

5. Start building bunk beds.  (1 day to cut wood, 1 day to assemble.) 

6.  Paint bunk beds.  I wanted to have an antiqued white.  We chose a technique where you paint a dark color first and then paint the light color over, rubbed the edges with wax and then sanded where we wanted it to look antiqued.  I am not sure I would choose this again, because as you can see in the final pictures below, the white is coming off a LOT more in the high traffic areas and it looks more dirty than antique.  It took a day for the brown and then a day for the white.  (I used Sherwin Williams 6083 -- Sable for brown and 6119 -- Antique White for white.)  I have heard wonderful things about Annie Sloan chalk paint and still wonder if I had splurged, if I would have the same issues of the white coming off….  Oh well, too late now!   

7.  Assemble

8. Decorate!!  My favorite part…  obviously!  

I bought this dresser from My Happy Place by Deanna Cheriese.  It is a 1936 dresser that she painted using the Annie Sloan chalk paint at a seriously reasonable price!!  I wish I could buy all my furniture from her.

One of the major reasons I love the bunks is there is still room to play in the room!! Not a ton, but enough!!

This is going to be hard to believe, but the girls did not fight over who slept where… Ivy on top, Sidney in the middle and Brie on the bottom.  I was shocked, but went with it!  This is the place that is theirs alone, so they do not switch around.  They haven't even asked!

And in case you want to know… Quilts, pillow shams and drapes from Pottery Barn Kids, Pink lattice sheets and green Euro pillows from The Company Store,  light fixture from Ikea, rug from Overstock.com

8a.  DIY Wooden Book Crate from Family Love Home Blog!  We desperately needed a book storage solution in the girls room and I ran across this cute little book crate tutorial!  Super easy and perfect size.  I painted it the same color as the walls, where in hindsight I would have done a contrasting color…

Brie helping me paint.

I still haven't done wall decorations and as it's been over a year I wonder if I'll get around to it at all… hmmmm…

9.  Start the process again for the boys room… Build.  (Their room was already green, so I just left it.  Sherwin Williams 6710 -- Melange Green.)

10.  Paint bunk beds.  (I started with SW 6524 -- Commodore, but it was too blue, so I had them darken it until it was more navy.)

11.  Assemble.

12.  Decorate again…  Yippee!!

Mitchell sleeps on top.  Luke in the middle.  And cousins on the bottom.

Again, if you want to know… Quilts, pillow shams and drapes from Pottery Barn Kids, Star sheets from The Company Store, rug from Target.

And again, haven't gotten around to wall decor…

13.  DIY light fixture.  I fell in love with this navy and white striped light fixture from Shades of Light, but I was already over budget for the room and just couldn't justify an extra $200!!!  So, I searched for tutorials on how to make one.  The one I found was gluing ribbon on the lamp shade, but since the only cheap white shade I could find (from Ikea) wasn't the same circumference top to bottom the ribbon bubbled.  So I ended up just painting a blue strip on the top and bottom and calling it a day.  Not perfect, but cute!

14.  Try to tame the lego disaster…  I stole this idea from my organizing sensei, my sister, Amy…  Plastic organizers from The Container Store.   Believe it or not, this has kept the lego messes minimal.  Before they were all in a huge bucket and the boys would dump the entire thing out every day and it getting them to clean it up was like murder!!

So… if you ever were curious how a quintuplet family squeezes into a small house,  now you know!!  

Keepin' it real…

1.  I still HATE changing the sheets.

2.  The rooms normally look like a tornado blew through them.

3.  As cute as the light fixtures are, I really miss the ceiling fans….  Two words… Texas.  Summer.

I am so, so proud of Stephen for being able to build these!!  He truly is amazing and the kids absolutely LOVE them!!