Winter Pinterest Challenge: Big Boy Room Box Spring

Hi friends!

As part of the Winter Pinterest Challenge, I decided to tackle a project for A's big boy room. While he's not technically in his room yet, he is officially in his bed boy bed (as of last week).

If you are new here, our little guy learned how to escape his crib at 19 months. This transition to a big boy bed has been slow, as A is affectionately known as the world's worst sleeper. After a short stint in the dog bed, he's finally sleeping through the night. And after a week in his big boy bed? He is still sleeping, which is amazing! We're thrilled that he loves it. After a year and a half of really bad sleep, we're finally in a good place.

Moving on...

I wanted to share how I covered A's new box spring in burlap, rather than using a bed skirt. My inspiration? This pin, on Pinterest. I had to make a few tweaks as I went along, but in the end, I'm so happy with how this turned out.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we?

After our big date day-trip to Ikea, we were the proud owners of a memory foam twin mattress, and a plain white box spring.

  

Once we realized what a pain in the rear-end the protective railings would be install, I decided that the box spring had to be covered now. I knew that I didn't want a bed skirt, and there was no way that I was taking those railings back off to cover the box spring... well, let me rephrase that. There was no way I was getting C to do anything more than once, especially taking the railings off after he spent 2 hours trying to get them on correctly. 

I sweetly asked everyone to stop working, while I made a quick run to the fabric store.

My mother-in-law joined me for a trip to Joann's, and after some quick math, we realized that the only way to have one seam on the boxspring was to wrap it like a present. $25 and 8 yards of fabric later, my father-in-law helped me start the project.

Tools needed:

fabric (you do NOT need 8 yards)

staple gun (& staples)

scissors 

hammer

I'll let the rest of the pictures explain how this should work, but in essence, you start "wrapping" fabric around the box spring only covering the diameter. We started stapling to the bottom, so that when the bottom was done, we could lay the boxspring back down on the bed and staple the top. I know, it's confusing... maybe the pictures will help!

stapling along the bottom, and wrapping the corners like you wrap the corners of a present

the one and only visible seam - just the two ends of fabric folded over, and stapled on the "top" and "bottom"

once you've stapled the entire bottom, you'll have all the extra fabric on top

securing the top - we also cut off a lot of the excess fabric before stapling, so that it would not impede the Angelcare monitor

A few things to note:

• It helps to hammer in the staples as you go, so that they sink into the boxspring and are less of "hazard" for little fingers
• If you are using burlap for this project, it will get everywhere. Be prepared to vacuum little pieces of burlap up for at least a week.
• You can avoid buying so much fabric if you are OK with two seams, or, are interested in sewing smaller strips together (like the tutorial suggests). I didn't have that much time to figure it out - we started this project at 4:00 and A's bedtime is 8:30!

Here's the finished product. In hindsight, I wish I had gone for a darker burlap. But knowing me, I'll be redoing this in a year anyways, so for $25 and 2 hours of time, I consider it a success.

Oh, and I considered taking down the railings so I could have a pretty picture of A's big boy bed to share in blog-land, but honestly, this is a big boy bed for a 22 month old, so the railings are keeping it (very) real.

yes, the cover to the thermostat is off... this is how I found it after his nap today. A cover for it has been ordered. Thank you, wild child.

the new view from the hallway

If you are curious, you can see what the room looked like before here and here.

Linking up for the Pinterest Challenge with these awesome bloggers!
 
Young House Love

Bower Power Blog
Decor and the Dog
The Remodeled Life