The Nursery; with toddler bunk beds

You know in Peter Pan when the kids are talking about it being Wendy's last night in the nursery?  I never really understood why kids (not babies) were in the nursery.  Now I do.  We've always just had a boys' room and girls' room (and mom & dad's room), but that's not working anymore and we have some more flexibility in this house.  We've been setting up an nursery for kids 7 (at least) and under.

We started by converting 2 toddler size beds into a set of toddler size bunk beds.  Our 6 year old and 4 year old will be sleeping in these.  We used the two headboards for the bottom bunk and the two foot boards for the top.  The beds are well secured together with pegs and brackets.  ***Use extreme caution in attempting this.  This is not a method/use recommended by the manufacturer.  My husband is an experienced builder and had to alter the construction of the beds***

The nursery is close to mommy and daddy's room.  It is also near our main living area.  We were struggling with littles not cleaning up their messes, having a hard time finding their clothing, or getting into older siblings things.  This way we will be better able to supervise and help these little ones.

We think this will also give them a nice play space that they can have more freedom in.  We will not have to be quite as concerned about curious/mischievous little hands.  *Some toys will be stored out of the way in the closet, others will be out to play with.  We limit what our children have available to them and rotate the toys regularly.  We find them to be more content with what they have when we do this.

Once baby arrives we will be storing 4 children's clothes in this room.  Baby will likely sleep in our room for several months.  We will put a small crib or playpen in here when it is time for baby to join the others. *We're just using the shelves in the closet  and hanging many of the girls things for their clothes right now.  We're holding off on buying a dresser to (1)save for it (2)see if it is really necessary since it would be nice not to have one in there.

The biggest goal here was protecting some sweet relationships.  We could see that some kids were being provoked to wrath either through siblings or the situations we had put them in.  This was something that could be changed, and so we needed to do that.  It has been working out very well for everyone.

I thought I'd share the costs of doing this with you especially since this was a budget project.
Crib mattress- $57 we only needed one since we already had a spare

Toddler bed- $79x2 on Amazon  *while we would normally look for these on Craigslist we bought these new because they had to be the exact same bed to work for our purposes.

The pink toddler bed (with mattress) was purchased quite a while ago by finding it on Craigslist.  It was new, the child that originally owned it never slept in it.  I think it cost $55

*This had been the girls' room.  Our two older girls moved downstairs to a room we had left empty to allow for some growth.  That growth happened sooner than we thought it would. :)