Easy Bunk Bed Hide Out

A few years ago my son's imagination blossomed like a field of wild flowers. With all the wonderful things his mind started coming up with also came the monsters under the bed and things that go bump in the night. Soon he was being visited by huge scary dragons with bright red eyes and he wanted to hide away in a safe place. His bottom bunk became his safe place when we tucked some sheets under the top bunk to make a "cave" for him to hide and sleep safely in. Equip with wind up flash lights and rechargeable night lights he was ok with night time once again. He loved his "cave" but I couldn't handle it being so thrown together so something had to be done. Also he won't sleep on the top bunk because it's open, and his little brother is too small for the top bunk, so the bunk beds we bought to save space in their room turned out to not save space at all since my younger son stills sleeps in his car bed.


I ordered two ceiling curtain rods from Amazon to resolve this little problem. A short one for the end and a longer one for the side (links at the bottom). This way the "cave" can look clean and neat and we actually get two caves since the top bunk is also now covered. My son is now excited to try sleeping in his new top cave and maybe we'll get lucky and his little brother will take over the bottom bunk so we can get the toddler bed out of their room. The great part about these ceiling rods is that they have clips and all I did was use the flat sheet from his sheet sets since he doesn't use them anyway, so I didn't have to buy curtains and they matched his room perfectly. I simply folded them over to the length I wanted and clipped them up, no cutting or sewing required so it was a huge time saver and I didn't ruin the sheets in case we want to use them on the bed again in the future. Not only did we make bedtime a little neater but the boys had a blast playing in their new "hideouts" today. =)

One sheet covers the short end and a small part of the long side, so it's hanging on both curtain rods. The second sheet fits perfectly over the remaining part of the long side and I had enough to overlap the sheets by a couple inches to make sure there isn't a crack for my son to see through or the "monsters" to see in. I put the baton at the far end near the ladder so it can easily be pulled over out of the way to make climbing safer. I also tied a ribbon around the corner of the bunk beds so during the day if they're not using it to play I can pull it to one side and tie it out of the way to make the room look bigger and more open. You could easily set it up so the curtains can to ties to two ends for a different look during the day or if you had 3 sheets you could slide one to each corner and tie it up creating more of a 4 post bed look. I'm sure there are many other possibilities but this was my easy fix. =)





These are the curtain rods I bought but you may be able to find some cheaper elsewhere. I also considered some ring type hooks in the ceiling and some thick wire to make my own rod type unit but I love that these ones make it so you can slide the curtains all the way over and out of the way.
Shorter track (38-66 inches)
Longer track (60-120 inches)

I'm no Blogger

Hi to any sad soul who has found yourself reading my "Blogs". I can't spell, I have terrible grammar and my writing is worse for the wear but since I do love making crafty crap and love getting ideas from other's blogs I thought I'd give it a shot to share projects I'm attempting. So we'll see if this blogging thing sticks, here we go.....