Design upgrade: Ikea bed, version 3.0

We're currently in the phase of pre-parenthood where it is time to realise that a new person will be living with us soon. A very little person, but a person nonetheless! Last weekend was the beginning of turning my home office/the spare room into a baby bedroom, and there was a domino effect on the rest of the apartment layout as well.

But while we're still sorting those areas out to be blog-ready, I thought I'd share a little DIY/upgrade we completed a few weeks ago - recovering our bed upholstery.

A few years ago my old Ikea bed (which I had had since Uni) was in dire need of a makeover. The fake wood laminate covering the chipboard it is made of was slowly peeling off. We also wanted a bed head, as that seemed like a grown-up thing to have. So with some 2x4s and a block of foam, Patrick fashioned a nifty bed head which he attached to the bed frame, and I went about padding and covering the frame in one of my patented displays of quasi-dodgy-upholstery.

Before!

The fabric we chose back then was a deep chocolate brown, which we liked at the time, but it became apparent pretty quickly that it showed up a lot of dust. And a while later we got a new white bed spread and some new lamps and then the dark brown just seemed like it needed a change.

An its-now-or-never pre-parenthood decision was made to recover it in a lighter, more textured fabric, and good old Spotlight had exactly what we wanted (on sale, natch). In fact, this fabric is actually curtain fabric, so it is thick, but not so thick that it was hard to maneouver around the frame.

This time around, the work was 50% done, so I just put the new fabric over the old and Patrick took care of the manual labour tasks. It took a day (mainly because of my needing so many preggo bathroom/snack/stretching breaks), but cost a mere $30 in fabric, and now we think it looks like a real grown-up bed. Just the kind that two people who might be solely responsible for a little guy pretty soon might have...

After!


(Lamps are also from Spotlight, if you're wondering...)