The Super Secret Project: The Day the Glue Gun Let Me Down

And now, at last, I reveal the super secret project that I actually already mentioned, back when I posted about August and Milo's room. It's also a really simple project, both in theory and in execution, so I hope no one feels too let down by all my "super secret" build up.

I came across the idea to make a lego table out of Ikea Trofast shelves awhile back on SunScholars blog:

Sun Scholars DIY Lego Table

Pretty cool, isn't it? I loved the way it looked and the idea of the built in storage. But I wanted something a little smaller for Milo and Gus' room, so I decided to make theirs out of just one Trofast shelf, instead of two attached together. 

We picked up the shelf and bins (I wanted all green, but they didn't have green for the bottom ones, so we went with white instead) at Ikea last Sunday. Then I looked around online to find the best combination of baseplates. The best deal and the best fit for the single shelf was 2 of the extra large gray plates. Each one measures 15 by 15 inches, and the shelf is around 17 by 36, I believe, so two of them would fit nicely with just a few extra inches. 

I waited for the baseplates to get here from Amazon. They came in a ridiculously big box:

...packed in a million inflatable bag things that the kids have been having much fun with:

Then I sat down to start assembling the shelf:

I got about this far:

...before Abe decided he was all done with his fun butterfly mat. Then Milo held him for awhile and bought me another 3 minutes or so:

Then Dave came home and I finally finished putting it all together. Trofast shelves are relatively easy to assemble, as far as Ikea stuff goes. 

Next I broke out the glue gun to attach the baseplates to the shelf. First I attached them to each other with legos, to make sure they'd line up correctly once they were on the shelf, as per the suggestion of Sun Scholars:

There was a lot of area to cover, and I had to put a new glue stick in the glue gun halfway through, but I went as fast I could, got a bunch of glue on there, turned them over and pushed down, and....they didn't really stick at all. Yeah. I'm not sure if the glue had too much time to dry before I could get it turned over or what, but, at any rate, glue gun fail.

Dave suggested liquid nails. But our liquid nails container said it was no good for plastic.

So, finally, I went with heavy duty double sided tape. This is what Sun Scholars used, but she said it was because they wanted something less permanent and suggested that glue would probably be better if that wasn't a concern. Or maybe not, it turns out. I'm sure there's some kind of glue like substance that would work, but going with double sided tape seemed easier than hunting said substance down.

So the next day Dave picked some up at Target and, after a lot of time spent picking dried glue off the plates with my fingers, I gave it another shot.

That was the whole roll of tape. It costs $4 a roll and doesn't go very far. But far enough, it seems. So far it's holding up very well. 

Then we hauled the finished project up to Milo and Gus' room and turned them loose to rehome the legos and start playing. They have some sort of elaborate organization system in mind, so the transfer from the old bin is still a work in progress, but they've been having fun.

I moved that shelf that used to be against the mural wall over to under the window, where the bin of legos used to be. I wanted the lego table this way so that a kid could be on either side of it. Within an hour, it looked like this:

So there you have it. An easy lego table and, I'm hoping, a way to keep legos where they belong instead of all over the floor and under the bed.

Not the thriftiest project in the world (the Trofast shelf is $69. The bins are $4 for the big ones and $3 for the smaller ones. Base plates were around $15 each), but it saved us some money over buying a pre-made one and we were able to get it exactly how we wanted as far as size and amount of storage space.

Linking with:


Classy Clutter's Spotlight Saturday
Under the Table and Dreaming's Sunday Showcase Party
Tuesdays Treasures at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
TwelveOEight's Pretty Things Party
Tutorials and Tips at Home Stories A to Z
From Dream to Reality at the DIY Dreamer
Tutorials, Tips, and Tidbits at Stone Gable Blog
Hookin' Up With House of Hepworths
Somewhat Simple
The Inspiration Gallery Link Party
Chic on a Shoestring's Flaunt It Friday
The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday
Tatertots and Jello's Weekend Wrap-up Party

Bargain!

How about a post that doesn't require me to wrestle with my card reader problems, because the stuff it's about isn't in my house yet!? Yay!

I've been holding off on ordering the bunk bed for Milo and August's room, but I checked Target's website the other day and discovered that the set I was eyeing was on clearance.

It's the "Wrangler Bunk Bed" in espresso. The material is listed as "wood composite," so it's not the nicest bed in the whole world or anything, but it looks good in the picture, and the one review on the site has positive things to say.

The two other bunk beds I considered were this black metal one, also from Target:

This is pretty much exactly like the loft bed Milo sleeps in now, only bunk beds. It's on clearance for $107, so it's main selling point was price. But I really wanted something that at least looked like wood for the forest room.

And then I thought about this one from Ikea:

The price ($159) is good, and it's real pine....but I would have to paint or stain it, and I already have a pretty big line up of things waiting to be painted or stained.

So when the Wrangler, with its awesome cowboy name, went on clearance I was sold. It's marked down to $169 from $199, so not a super dramatic price change, BUT! Target.com was also having a sale wherein you got 15% off if you spent over $125. And on top of that I could use my Target card for 5% off and free shipping. So my final price after tax was $146.87. Cheaper than the Ikea bed! And close enough to the cost of the metal bed to make me feel good about paying a little more for the one I wanted.

And on top of that, I can still Craigslist the loft beds. The metal one is almost brand new is for sale on Target's website right now for $150, I think (it was on sale when we bought it, so we didn't pay that much). I'm thinking I'll try listing it for $90 or so and see what happens. And then maybe $75 or so for the one with the slide. It's older, but it's still in pretty good shape...and it has a slide! If I actually get close to that for them, I'll be breaking even on trading them in for the bunk bed.

House Tour: Milo and August's Room

Blogging goal for the....week? Next two weeks? ....is to finish up a house tour series--one of those ones wherein I show the rooms we haven't touched as well as the ones we've whipped somewhat into shape. And the ones like today's, which are sort of in between. (This will be an easier goal to accomplish if my *#$%^^^ing card reader would cooperate. I think that the card reader KILLED my old memory card. And I think the new card reader is already screwed up. I hate them. I got today's pictures by using the card reader that's built into the upstairs computer, the one that is mostly for kids to play Minecraft on, but that is a pain to do. I want a functioning card reader down here! Damnit).

Kid rooms were the first ones to get painted when we moved in, but now they're kind of in stasis. Yet I feel like they could be finished (or, you know, finished enough for now) without a whole lot of time or effort; it's just a matter of getting around to stuff. So maybe these posts will motivate us to get around to stuff.

When I saw this room:

featured on The Lettered Cottage awhile back, I knew I needed a forest room somewhere in the new house. And, fortunately, Gus and Milo were as into it as I was, and agreed to be the lucky forest room residents.

Here is what we have so far:

The bed is a "junior loft bed" from Target's web site. It looks like they're not selling it anymore, but have one that's basically the same except silver instead of black. It was on sale for just over $100 when we bought it, IIRC. The comforters are also from Target--Room Essentials Tulip Comforter--last I saw it's on clearance in the stores right now (not on the website); it wasn't when we bought them, so it looks like we paid around $20 each for the comforter/pillow sham sets. And the bed making is Dave's doing....I'm too pregnant to climb up there and do it, even for blog photography purposes. The paint, like in the kid bathroom, is Martha Stewart's Saguaro Green. Curtains are from Target (I know they're pulled out of the way so you can't really see them, and I just bought one panel per window for cost cutting purposes. They're brown and stripey). We used shelves we already had for the under bed toy/book storage...the one with the baskets is from a garage sale, orginally, and the other one is from Target. More on the wall mural later.

I'm still in love with this light fixture. We took down the old, builder grade ceiling fan and put this up. Gus is not  supposed to have fans in his room because of his dust mite allergy, plus this is pretty and the fan wasn't. I'm pretty sure that we got this at Lowe's and that it was right around $100, but I can't find it now. It looks an awful lot like this one that sells for $270 at Lighting Showroom, though, so it looks like we got a decent deal on it.

Gus' side of the room. We've had this loft bed for years....in our old  house we had a mattress on the floor under it and used it as bunk beds. It originally had a slide and a tent on top. We still have the slide in the garage, but there's not really enough floor space for it here. 

Both kid bedrooms are pretty much the same size--around 12 by 13, I think. We opted for this to be the shared room because it has two closets in it. And because there's not a whole lot of wall space left after the beds are in there (and we didn't want to cover up too much of the wall mural), we opted for
storing all the clothes in the closets instead of having dressers. So each closet has one of these shelves for non hanging clothes, with cubbies for shirts, pants, etc., and then the bins that slide out for pajamas and underwear/socks. Oh, see those little wooden balls on a cord? Those are strings of lights that we haven't gotten around to hanging up yet.

A very exciting picture of the wall of closets. We may take the doors down and put curtains up here, because no one likes bifold doors, right? Although these work fine for the time being.

Under bed storage.

Okay, so! Future plans! Even though we just got the one loft bed, I've talked the boys into a regular bunk bed instead. I'm just not thrilled with how the two beds take up so much space in the room. If they were regular twin beds instead of loft beds, I'd be fine with how they look but not with how little space would be left for toys. I did float an idea to do twin beds and keep the toys on shelves in the hallway outside (where there's a lot of unused space), but they didn't go for it.

So we're planning to sell the loft beds and buy a basic set of wooden bunk beds, which will go on the wall opposite the windows. They really want a desk, so I'm thinking that will go between the windows, and then we'll consolidate toys (and probably bring most of the books down to the library--fewer books is also a good thing with a dust mite allergy) and have a corner for toy storage.

There's not really a whole lot of wall space left with the wall mural plus bunk beds plus the two windows plus the closets, but we bought this at Ikea the other day anyway, in hopes that we can find somewhere to hang it:

Why, when I type it all out, it sounds so simple! The loft bed/bunkbed switch is so easy (and I'm guessing we can sell the loft beds on Craiglist for more than half of what the bunk beds will cost), but I think it will really make the room look a lot bigger. And give us an excuse for a toy purge, since blocks and legos are about the only things that get played with these days anyway. And Snap Circuits. And board games, but they live downstairs.

About the wall mural: in case anyone is out there thinking, "I want MY house to look like a dentist's office from 1984, too!" This was from Amazon, and it came in 8 big panels with a packet of glue to mix up. We lined them all up on the floor in our bedroom first, then Dave hung them up and smoothed them out while I got the glue mixed and applied to the next panel. It was kind of a pain, and the finished project is far from perfect (as far as wrinkles and things lining up perfectly), but it was fairly quick (it took maybe 2 hours all together) and the kids are happy with it. It definitely makes the room more...interesting than it would be otherwise. I'm a little terrified at the thought of ever trying to get it off the wall, but with luck it will be awhile before they get tired of it.