Fortopia

Yes, you can add this fort to the long list of Ikea Kura bed hacks. We have a Kura bunk bed in my daughters bedroom, and decided to use another as a fort. Since this room has very fews walls on which to build a jungle gym, we had to build “out” into the room a bit with this fort.

My daughter and I sketched out our ideas which included a pulley system, a “counter” for serving food, an under fort for costumes, and an upper level for plays and of course lots of jumping into a giant beanbag my husband brought into the marriage. The bean bag covers are very expensive, so I made my own with some heavy duty elastic!

At the time of building this we did not have many tools we ended up deciding to do wood slats, as that would only require easy small cuts, and screws. We bought 2.5” boards of wood from home depot (I think these are sold as 3” but are actual 2.5” This could be done with any thickness of board, the thicker the board the less you need, but also it depends on the look you want.) We made a frame of 2x4’s that were 7.5’ tall to create a frame on which to attach the boards and jungle gym and make the whole thing a bit more sturdy than a standard bunk bed.

I think we had to make a few extra cuts, but essentially, I did the math to buy the fewest boards and get all these cuts. I showed up at Home Depot with all my measurements 20 min. into a Seahwaks game when the place what a ghost town. They graciously cut all my wood for me (they can cut a bunch of boards at once, so it really didn’t take long) however, if you have a chop saw, this could be accomplished quickly at home as well. Once the boards were cut, screwing them in was quick work. I turned a board on its side and inserted between each row to provide an even spacing.

The circle window was made from a round clock from goodwill, we took out the back of the clock and had a great circle with glass for much less than any circle window would have cost.

Most of the fort items were things we had around the house, a shelf bracket and some curtains from Goodwill completed the look.