Loft bed

June was Month of the Loft Bed.

If children's excitement could be linked to a battery, we would have been running off-grid all month. 

Tyson built this bed using mostly recycled materials found on verge collection. We gathered up an almost-complete single and queen bed frame. Some of the timber was too deteriorated to use. Other bits were joined together to make stronger posts and the dents and damage marks puttied away.

The sides from the queen bed were added to the single bed. Some additional new timber was also needed.

 

Tyson worked away at it for weeks, with some help and tool-loaning from his dad. As after five dry months it rained here nearly all of May, we re-purposed the carport (our only covered outdoor area) as a workspace.

Finally the bed moved inside, heralded with unbounded joy by its new occupant. 

And by her small accomplice, who learned to climb the ladder in about ten seconds flat.

This is a step for sustainable living on account of the recycled materials, but also as a way to use our existing space. It can be easy to see an overcrowded room and think it needs to be bigger. Or to anticipate two children big enough for their own big beds (not quite yet but coming soon) and assume they need two rooms. 

The loft bed has transformed a fairly ordinary room into a fantastic play space, with the under-bed area great for cubbies (with their own light!) and the increased floor space inviting more play in general. The lower bed (also an old verge-collection find) is not physically attached to the loft bed, to allow maximum flexibility as needs change. The ladder can also be easily moved, including going over the end if necessary.

Initial Time: Oh well. Lets just say a lot. Tyson has been full-time home dad the past few months and this was his main project, in between parenting, for weeks. Plus there were months of dreaming, thinking, planning, carefully watching the verge, bringing materials home, hiding a single bed frame under another single bed for six months while waiting for more, sketches, measurements...

Initial Cost: $200 for timber and assorted things like sand paper, screws, wood putty, etc. Especially for The Ladder (which is arguably the best bit of it all).

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero. While we could possibly have picked up a second-hand loft bed for around $200 on Gumtree etc, new beds like this cost $800-$1200, so it was a considerable saving.

Impact: Two beds saved from land fill, and equivalent timber, factory overheads, chemicals, transport etc saved from being made into a bed for us. The timber we bought was plantation pine, while many manufactured beds use rainforest timbers. One modest size bedroom has been made to feel bigger. And the joy... 

I'm also posting about it because I'm so darn proud of Tyson's efforts. And because Eva wants photos on the blog to show the bed to her beloved kindy teacher.

PS: I've added an extra photo of our boy playing in the winter sun to last month's post. For those of you in it for the photos.

March 2011: Verge Collection

Since moving into this neighbourhood ten years ago I have been delighted to participate in the bi-annual hard rubbish verge collection. It is affectionately known in our household as 'chuck out day', but in reality is more of a 'pick up day' or even a pick up week. March was the season for chuck out days, both in our own neighbourhood and in several others we frequent. We needed a new bookshelf, as my habit of buying second-hand picture books from discarded from the WA State Library system had left us with a teetering mountain of kids books in a corner of the office. I had held off purchasing one for some months to await the next verge collection. Bookshelves of any quality, we discovered, are not an item of choice for throwing away. After looking for a couple of weeks, though, we finally found one on our very own street, just six or seven houses away, which given its size and weight was just as well or I don't know how we would have got the thing home. 

Of course, while looking for a bookshelf we came across all sorts of other useful things that are now living at our house too! A list of what I can recall: push-along toddler tricycle, six white plastic outdoor chairs (for my sister who was having a party), cane toybox, yellow plastic children's chair, plastic Fisher-Price castle, most of a timber Viking stronghold (I think it may have had more trimmings originally, and possibly one or two more wall pieces), timber Viking ship (mast broken, easily fixable), several plastic/rubber insects and reptiles, soft toy whale, two soft toy lizards, large metal freestanding lamp (needed a broken globe dug out of the socket but otherwise in working order) and the bookshelf. In the past I have also collected carpets/ rugs, couches, armchairs, outdoor settings, a desk (which with a few additions has been Eva's nappy change table), dolls houses, and chests of drawers, to name a few. On one occasion my mum and I found a very heavy couch in good condition, too big for my car, and in absence of any other wheeled device we borrowed two discarded children's strollers from a nearby verge pile to wheel the couch up a hill to my house. I recommend getting hold of a fridge trolley instead of this method of removal!

I was also please to see the old broken bikes we put out get taken away by people to be reused.  

Initial Time: We didn't make any special trips to look for things, but kept our eyes out along the verges wherever we drove for about four weeks while things were piling up in different suburbs. A few two minute stops to jump out and add an item or two to our car collected most of the items above. The outdoor chairs took a little long to get into the car. A pile of toys down our street took a special trip to sort through and bring things home. The book shelf required taking a fridge trolley (or if you are from South Australia, as 'sack truck') to collect. But none of the collection missions took more than about 15 minutes.

Initial Cost: Zero.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero.

Impact: All of the above items have been saved from landfill. (I have to not watch when the council comes to pick up verge collection items, because the way perfectly good things are crushed and thrown into the truck upsets me so much). In addition, as many of the things we collected are items I would have purchased if they had not been on the verge, a significant amount of raw materials including quite possibly some rainforest timbers have been saved from being turned into my furniture.

I also think that using items from the verge to furnish my house challenges consumer culture and helps us to feel part of our neighbourhood in a different way.