You get a bed and you get a bed and you get a bed

Our Ikea surge continued a couple of months ago when we added yet another Swedish furniture addition to our house. This time, we added another bed to our collection and was one of the harder decisions that we've had to make when considering our options at Ikea (usually we do our research on the website and are in and out in possibly record time). Today I'll show you the building process and next time, discuss the pros and cons of each item we considered, so that maybe if you're considering similar items, you can find our research useful. Big kid wanted a "bunk bed" and after much consideration, we opted for the KURA. 

I don't want to boast that we've become really good at this, but I may have set a timer and completed the whole thing in about 100 minutes. Many of the negative reviews of this product are related to how hard it is to build. FALSE NEWS. Well, at least if you're like us and have dozens of Ikea products in your home (in fact, thinking this through has made me curious exactly how many Ikea products we've built over the years--I may do a future post on that very topic). So starting from "carrying the boxes upstairs" to "just have to add the sheets and pillows" was, for us at least, a pretty smooth process. The kids even "helped" (which really means it probably took longer than it needed to).

I guess I'll spend a few minutes on the details. First, as always with Ikea stuff, we skimmed the instructions. This bed can be built a few different ways, with the enclosed bed part as a loft, like this, or on the bottom. So we had to make sure we followed the relevant instructions. There was one other key part to the KURA that wasn't clear at the store and was a fabulous discovery to make once we started assembling--we could put the ladder on any side we wanted! This was great! In fact, as I'll discuss later, thinking that we could not do this was one reason that we were considering other options at the store.  It did means that we had to make sure we paid careful attention to the page number as we were building.

So here we go--lay out all the pieces and start looking for the first ones we need.

A drill with a hex set is really key to staying sane. Those little hand cranks only lead to cramped hands, un-tightened screws, and angry people.

In the case of KURA, the mattress slats (of which there are many) are held in place with a track that involved drilling many many screws into the frame. Again, we could not have done this quickly and sanely without a drill. We learned also that a battery-operated drill is helpful so that you're not tethered to an electrical cord.

Ta-dah! Several months later, the Big Kid loves it and the Little Kid loves having the blue bed as a hand-me-down. It took some creative planning (again, more on that later) to make sure it could all fit where it needed to, but we couldn't be happier. Plus the KURA is low enough that we parents can easily reach in and assist when needed (and make the bed--I truly have no idea how I would change the sheets on a full-height bunk bed). Big Kid is a Big Kid but she still needs plenty of snuggles, late-night drinks, or trips to the bathroom. I'd say something like "we're now all sleeping on Ikea beds" but we already have been for years! It's just that one of them was a crib, until now.

More next time on why we chose the bed we did and maybe a quick tally of all our Ikea builds over the years. I feel like we should start charging royalties!