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We are seriously considering buying our daughters (age 5 and almost 2) a loft bed of some sort. It will have to be a ''low'' or ''middlehigh'' loft bed as we live in an A-framed farm cottage. Besides - I don't want the kids up so high! I'm interested if anyone has experience with specific brands - Matrix beds, in particular - or others. I read archives & learned to go to Berkeley Kids Room on College. Does anyone know of other bed ''systems'' (meant to grow with the child) such as Matrix - they are costly, but worth it?? If others have chosen loft beds, have you been pleased overall? Thanks - any suggestions much appreciated! Nina
My husband, 4 month old and I live in a small one bedroom appartment and I am worried about what we will do for space when my son starts crawling. We are students, and can't afford anything much bigger unless we move far away from campus, which is also undesirable. (We have applied for UC housing, but that's not so cheap either) Recently I had the thought of replacing our bed with a loft bed. We have pretty high ceilings (8'8'') in our appartment so it seems like a good way to create more space... but I worry that it's not safe, esp. given the earthquake issue. Does anyone out there have experience with loft beds? How safe are they? Are they sturdy enough that I could safely make the area under the loft baby's play area? Does anyone have a reccommendation of a good place to get a sturdy loft? Feel free to respond here or email me in person. Thanks for any advice you might have, Agnes
When our daughter was about 1 1/2, we knew we needed to get her into her own bed so we looked at lofts and bunk beds. Not being from around here, we were especially scared of earthquakes so we wanted a really sturdy bed. We wanted something where we could have a double bed on top for my husband and I to sleep in, and a twin or a toddler bed underneath. Most of the lofts we looked at seemed *really* flimsy (especially the ones at Ikea) ..
We finally found what we were looking for at the Berkeley Kids room. They had a lot of beds on display, and it turned out that they would also custom build lofts to meet the height and mattress size that we needed (you could even get a kingsize bed lofted... crazy!).
We bought the lowest loft (I think its 6 ft, but i'm not sure), and its low enough that we can fit a box spring and full mattress and still have room to (almost) sit up without hitting the ceiling :) . The loft is VERY sturdy. We thought about putting a toddler bed under it but instead, my husband built a twin bed frame into the bottom so our little girl would be able to sleep in it for many years... and even with the twin bed built in we still had room to put our dresser under there. I know its probably hard to visualize but email me and I can send you a photo.. :)
The lofts at berkeley kids room are a little expensive, but we figured that we were actually saving a lot of money by not moving into a place that had two bedrooms or to a place where we couldn't walk to campus anymore.
Anyways, now we've graduated and moved into a two bedroom, but the bunkbeds are up in our daughters room. Whenever we have visitors, we always have a bed for them to sleep on! And people are always amused when we tell them about the ''dorm room'' set up we had in Berkeley -- my husband and I on the top bunk and our kid on the bottom bunk :)
Well, thats our story.
We have a small house & one shared bedroom for our 4 & 6 year old daughters. We have been trying to come up with a way to give them some floor play space and some private space (in an 8 X 10 room with 8'' ceilings). Loft beds seem like they would work but they all seem too high or too low - ie the kids hitting the ceiling or the underside of the beds. We have looked at Ikea, the Kids Room, and other miscellaneous stores including on the web. We have also read past recommmendations on this website. So here are our questions - a) I'd love to hear how others have handled this shortage of space and privacy b) Are there other stores or solutions you would suggest? Thanks for your help, Lynn
Has anyone tried out the loft bed advertised by Scandanavian Design? It's not as high as a true bunk bed, has a barrier except where the ladder comes up, and is usually shown with a slide (which will not fit in our small room). Any comments would be appreciated; but if anyone loved it and has now "outgrown" it & is prepared to sell, I may be interested. Or -- if you've seen this type of thing from another vendor... I don't want bunk beds, though, or anything that is high enough and/or without bars such that age 6 is the minimum age for safety. Letitia
By the way, we didn't buy the mattresses that come with the bed. Instead, we bought high grade foam mattresses at one of the foam shops in Berkeley, which have also held up well. Kim
Last updated: Apr 9, 2009
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