DIY Soil Block Mix

I clicked on a link to go to this page, but it had been taken down! So I looked it up on the archive site and wanted to save it somewhere, so this is not my content! Very useful though, and I hope many can benefit from this information.

 

 

We just stack 'em!

In a recent post, I shared how we turned some of our free scraps into a loft for our oldest son. Now it's time for pictures of the boys' entire bedroom. It's taken a while to get the whole room clean all at once for pictures. In fact, these pics were not really taken at the same time. HA!

Jonathan has a loft, Jacob has a cave and Jack has a box (get it?), and under the loft is a "fort" that we intend to close off with a curtain soon. (One thing at a time!) There is a lot packed into this little 9' X 11' room! (I thought it was bigger, but I just measured, and it isn't very big at all.)

As you enter......

Are you diggin' the green carpet?!

Pan to the left. Notice the shelves above for storage.....the hubby's brilliant idea!

Looking through the end of the "box" where Jack sleeps, into the fort.

Continue to the left. Opposite side of the room, looking into the "box" where Jack sleeps (the door is just to the left).

All the toys that are too big for the shelves go behind his bed in the closet floor. Almost all of them are Little People toys that we've accumulated through the years!

Jonathan hung some random pictures on the wall to decorate Jack's box. :)

A closer look at some of the toys on the shelves up under the loft. Trucks/cars, balls......

foam blocks, wooden blocks, and (not shown) Little People figurines, letter/number cookie cutters, Lego Duplos.....

and the medium sized toys and books on the opposite side.

I also want to get a gutter and screw it to the wall to use for the board books.

And here is the "cave", a.k.a. the middle bunk where Jacob sleeps and keeps all his personal belongings. He's got approximately 4' X 6' all to himself, and he LOVES it.

And now for the loft. Jonathan was taking pictures of the new chicks a few weeks ago, and his loft was actually clean, so I'll use these. :)

Just barely to the left of the picture here is his bed, the top bunk. To the right is the window, behind the shelf (which he built himself).

This is his top bunk, looking into the shelf of the closet. We added the shelf to match the height of his bed and made it strong enough to hold a lot of weight.

The shelf he made, looking through to the window.

And here's his little nook he created, shelf on the right and window to the left. The TV (used for gaming and DVDs only, and only with permission!) is sitting on the outside edge of the loft on a little coffee table he built for himself. He did a great job creating his own storage and arranging the room to fit his "needs". :)

And there you go! That's the whole room! We all just love it. Every aspect of it works so well for each one of them. It couldn't be any more practical, so I don't care that we have old, green carpet or that the walls and wood could use some paint. We feel proud of what we've accomplished!

Has anyone noticed there are no dressers anywhere in the room? That's because the 4th bedroom, which is right next to our master bedroom, was turned into the family closet. Maybe I'll post pictures of that another day, but it has ended up being just the boys' closet, all four of them. All of their clothes are in one room, and it is so convenient! But that's another post for another day.....

Turning Trash into Treasure!

We were given quite a bit of scrap building materials of all kinds, from several different people, when we first moved to the country 10 months ago. 

This is just some of what we were given. All of these boards were given by one family who was about to move, so they tore down their son's fort! We were sure grateful, and we have put much of it to good use!

We now have 4 bedrooms, but we I had another purpose for the "extra" room, so we I insisted that all the boys go into one room. Jonathan, the oldest at  almost 12, has been BEGGING for his own room for, well, pretty much his whole life (no one else does this!), so we finally gave him his own space using these scraps. Here's what we did.....

We still have the baby with us, so 3 are sharing the small-ish room. They still have their triple bunk bed though that doesn't take up much floor space, so honestly, they had more floor space than their sister! But they also have more stuff, and with Jonathan in Boy Scouts (a.k.a. knives and other things dangerous to little ones) and not really into toys anymore, I racked my brain to find a solution that would work for everyone.

Though the ceilings are only about 7 feet high, we decided to make a loft. The height divides the room almost exactly in half. We put the bunk bed up to the closet, which is just about the same size, built the loft to go between the middle and top bunks, and then we just closed off the area going from the middle bunk to the loft (it can be pushed open though for a 2nd way off of the middle bunk, in case of emergency). We also put in a new shelf in the closet to extend his bunk bed, basically doubling the width of it. And here are a few pictures of the process:

Myles wasn't going to help, but I really needed his help with the frame at one point, then he ended up taking over! We did have to buy the plywood, but the rest of the wood was free, and it is VERY sturdy! It is free-standing on four posts, but it is such a snug fit that it will not budge AT ALL! We joke that if a tornado comes and levels the house, this loft may very well be the last thing standing. No lie.

All the kids got to help out a little, but for some reason I didn't get a picture of Jonathan! He absolutely LOVES his very own space and actually thinks it is much better than a regular ol' bedroom (though I'm sure he would still prefer a whole room to himself). Our long-term plan, if we are here for several years, is to help Jonathan build himself a "tiny house" in the back yard, then Jacob will move up to the loft and Jack will take over "the cave" (Jacob's middle bunk, where we added a shelf in the closet to match his bed height). Then Joe will have "the fort" (the bottom) all to himself, unless we have another boy by then!

I have added pictures of their entire bedroom in another blog post. The loft was the biggest part of it, but we've been adding more to the whole design over the last few weeks.

Needless to say, Jayla wants a loft in her bedroom now. Though she has a whole room all to herself for the first time in her life, she is actually jealous of her brothers and spends most of her time in their room, often even sleeping on the bottom with Jack. Well, it IS pretty cool!