My wife and I were looking for a loft bed to make some more play space in my 3.5yr old son's bedroom. It's a fairly small room and we wanted more room for him to spread out his toys and things on the floor. He loves the new bed and spends quite a bit of time up on the bed part with his books as he does down below playing. We didn't think of how much he would like spending time in the bed part.
Assembly was fairly straight forward and the instructions are complete. The worst part of assembly is putting together the long side of the upper rails. Since there aren't separate fasteners, they have to be slid in at the same time as the end panels go on. Definitely requires two people.
When assembled as delivered, the bed is fairly sturdy. It's not too tall, so it would probably be livable. I decided to make a couple of improvements for its long-term use and peace of mind. The first was that I added 6 more slats to the part that supports the mattress. We are using a 5 thick foam mattress from IKEA and it just seemed too soft in places. With three 1x3's eight feet long, I cut six more slats at 39 and screwed them down just like the others. The next improvement was to use some self-tapping sheet metal screws to join the slats to the steel beam down the center. This made a huge difference in the rigidity of the bed. Finally, I added two anti-tip furniture straps to tie it to the wall.
Overall, I would say that this was a winner. I was hesitant to buy something instead of building it myself, but I think that in this case it was a success. With a couple of inexpensive improvements it became exactly what we needed.
A good start for a small bedroom
My wife and I were looking for a loft bed to make some more play space in my 3.5yr old son's bedroom. It's a fairly small room and we wanted more room for him to spread out his toys and things on the floor. He loves the new bed and spends quite a bit of time up on the bed part with his books as he does down below playing. We didn't think of how much he would like spending time in the bed part. Assembly was fairly straight forward and the instructions are complete. The worst part of assembly is putting together the long side of the upper rails. Since there aren't separate fasteners, they have to be slid in at the same time as the end panels go on. Definitely requires two people. When assembled as delivered, the bed is fairly sturdy. It's not too tall, so it would probably be livable. I decided to make a couple of improvements for its long-term use and peace of mind. The first was that I added 6 more slats to the part that supports the mattress. We are using a 5 thick foam mattress from IKEA and it just seemed too soft in places. With three 1x3's eight feet long, I cut six more slats at 39 and screwed them down just like the others. The next improvement was to use some self-tapping sheet metal screws to join the slats to the steel beam down the center. This made a huge difference in the rigidity of the bed. Finally, I added two anti-tip furniture straps to tie it to the wall. Overall, I would say that this was a winner. I was hesitant to buy something instead of building it myself, but I think that in this case it was a success. With a couple of inexpensive improvements it became exactly what we needed.