what we made

Do you remember when I made this toddler bed back in 2009 (blog post here)?

Well, we got that bed out of storage today for our big 2 year old boy! Right away I noticed something was missing, we no longer had the guardrail (not pictured) that we used for our other two kids. I'm pretty sure we paid like $30 for it and I was not interested in purchasing a new one to be used for such a short period of time. So right away we started thinking of ideas of how to make our own. I thought about making one of those pillow guardrails that I have seen, but I knew that after buying fabric and stuffing, it wouldn't be very economical. And then I did what one of my favorite things to do is....I decided we would just have to make it out of what we already have.

And so, here is what we did!

I took his crib bumper and cut it. I kept the padding inside and took out some of the seams. Then I sent Mark to Home Depot to buy some wood. He spent $4.71. That is what this whole project cost us.

 

I slipped the wood into the bumper and then sewed up one side. I also cut off all of the ties.

Then we took some wood and attached the new guardrail to the bed.

And voila, a padded wooden guardrail for $4.71. We really wanted to get the project done so our little guy could sleep in his new big-boy-bed tonight, but if we had more time I might have put padding on both sides of the guardrail (not just the inside where it already was) and I might have stained or painted the wood. But to be honest, I love it just as it is!

I think there are so many times when we go out and buy new things, when we could have either used something we have, or think of a better solution. It was so easy, now here is to hoping that training him to sleep in the bed will be a piece of cake too.