Make a Kids Room Divider
Two of our children share an enormous upstairs room. It's supposed to be the master bedroom but for various reasons, including the fact that we have a lot of children, it works out for us to take another room and for the two youngest to share.
The problem, of course, is that they fight. Plus they have a five year age gap difference, as well as a gender difference. Eight year old boys don't really like to share with their baby sister. And baby sisters need some definite visual boundaries so they don't constantly take their little friends into the wrong section of the room when their big brothers are at school and completely mess up all the interesting stuff they're not supposed to touch. Just saying.
So we decided to divide the room. The first thing we needed was this.
Yep. That'd be my dad. Not only is he good with a hammer and nails, he's also delighted to take on whatever project I throw at him. (Here he is blowing up monster balloons for a decorating job I gave him. And his last building job was a harp trolley. See?)
He built two of these babies for me.
Pine frames, approximately 125cm wide and about 160cm high. Easy enough to make if you can use a square, a saw and a drill and screwdriver, and not too expensive either.
They're light weight enough to do no damage should they accidentally (or deliberately) be tipped over by children. (This is always my concern with room dividers. You don't want them to cause accidents!)
Obviously, though, they don't do much room dividing like this though. The plan was always to cover them in fabric.
I dug around in the cupboard for some fabric and found this rather gorgeous piece which ended up being exactly the right width. With a little bit of staple gun love, look what happened.
I stapled along the top to begin with, stretching out the material so it was taut. Then I started down one side, and then the other, making sure it was even all the way. Finally I turned it over and stapled the fabric to the bottom of the frame.
Ta dah!
My son has asked for green on his side, so I'll be purchasing some fabric for him soon. It'll be easy to staple on.
The one down side to these dividers is obvious in the photo on the right, above. The light doesn't get through. However, it's not terrible and if it became a real issue I could always rip off the fabric and put something white and much more translucent on the frame. Right now, though, it achieves its purpose of dividing a shared children's bedroom in a cheap, fun way, without being dangerous and without looking messy.