Ever since we posted about our co-sleeper, over the past year we've been receiving emails from readers looking to build something similar. Some people have even asked if we had thought about making them and selling them. We don't have any plans of selling them for two reasons:
1. It doesn't feel right. We based our co-sleeper on the Culla Belly design and it doesn't feel like it's our idea to sell.
- and -
2. Ideally, every one we make would have to be custom fitted to the bed it's going to attach to and to the baby it will hold. It's just not a construction that lends itself to mass production (at least with the materials and methods we are using). Maybe that's why the Culla Belly has yet to be produced.
With that said, we are in the process of trying to put together a guide of sorts on how to make one yourself. It won't contain any specific dimensions because everyone's bed set up is a bit different. But the guide will lay out the things to consider and the options you have when building it yourself. Hopefully we'll be able to get this together in a timely manner!
One last note. We are happy to share our process and make recommendations, but in the end it will be up to you to make sure it's safe and secure for your baby.
Stay tuned...
-c.
I'm so glad to have found someone working on this! I love the Culla Belly design, and have been disappointed in all the alternatives I've found online.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're incredibly busy at this time of year, but if you have even some partial specs you could share, I'd be so grateful. My husband loves woodworking, and our baby is due in a couple of weeks, so we're eager to get started on the project.
Hi Stephanie!
ReplyDeleteSorry, we're just getting back to you! I just saw this comment today. We were away on vacation. We've been getting a lot of requests with info on the co-sleeper. Unfortunately, we haven't had a chance to put together our specs but this is some info that we've shared with other people who wanted more details:
1.) We used Poplar. It's nice, on the cheap side, and is non-toxic.
2.) The corners were rounded over with a jigsaw, all other edges were rounded over using our router's round-over bit.
3.) The co-sleeper is 16" wide and 24" long. The size depends on a few factors I suppose. The first being that if you two are each 8 feet tall you may want to make it a bit bigger. We're pretty average-sized people and our son was 7 lbs. 15 oz. and 20.75" long so the size we made worked well. Also, it depends on how long you want your little one to sleep in there. We wanted him in his crib at about 3 months so we made it big enough to accommodate him until then.
4.) For fasteners we used screws in some places and just some non-toxic wood glue in others.
5.) The mattress has no cardboard. The felted wool pad turned out to be quite thick and dense so there was no need for added stability.
Hope that helps! Good luck and sending well wishes to you for a happy and healthy delivery :)
-crystal
Did you guys ever make the tutorial? I've been wanting the Culla for my next baby and now I'm 30 weeks. My friend just found this link for me.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't have time soon to write it all out, can you suggest a way to make it secure with a metal bed frame and mattress?
Thanks!,
Mary
Hi Mary,
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, we don't have the tutorial as we had hoped. If you want to email us pictures of what the frame of your bed looks like (under the mattress) it might help us give some suggestions. We have two boards that extend from the co-sleeper, under our matress and we have those two boards bolted down to our bed frame. Our bed frame is a platform bed made from two heavy duty pallets so we didn't care about drilling directly into the wood. I imagine it would be difficult to bolt directly into the metal of your bed, but you might be able to rig something where you bolt around the metal with U-bolts. Or you could just have the board extending under the mattress and not bolted down but add legs to co-sleeper, which I have seen on some co-sleepers. Hope that helps!
Good luck and congrats on the little one :)
-crystal
Es muy bueno su proyecto,y me ha inspirado para hacer mi proyecto de titulo para terminar mi carrera en la universidad, he leído con atención sus post y según mi investigación es muy difícil encontrar estandarizar para ser producido en masa, debido a que existen muchos tipos de cama (box spring , camas americanas , hechas con pallets , etc)y justamente lo que mas me ha costado es lograr afirmar el co-sleeper a la cama siguiendo de la idea básica y sencilla del culla belly sin utilizar "patas".
ReplyDeleteLes mando un saludo desde Chile
me gusta mucho su blog :)
hey :)
ReplyDeleteLove the design..
Seriously considering building a co-sleeper. I was just wondering, the slats that fit under the mattress, how much did they lift the mattress up off the base and if so did they hurt your back at all?
Thanks..
Thank you! We had the co-sleeper bolted to the bed frame, so the weight of the co-sleeper didn't push the mattress up. The boards themselves were 3/4" and I didn't notice them at all.
Delete-Crystal
I love this design and your approach to constructing it. We are pregnant with twins and are designing a similar co-sleeper. Just curious if you have any thoughts on width dimensions for 2 babies versus 1. The picture with Q in it seems like there's a fair bit of space width wise. I was thinking about only increasing the width from 16" to 24". I'm just interested to see if you have any thoughts on increased width dimensions after having a newborn to 3 months in this one.
ReplyDeleteAnnie
Brisbane, Australia
Hi Annie,
DeleteThank you and congratulations on your twins! There was a lot of space width-wise and would accommodate two newborns easily since they don't move much, if at all. But they probably wouldn't be able to both be in there up to 3-months at 16", I don't think. My babies started to flail their arms and move quite a bit by then.
I think you could easily make it wider, but would definitely need some sort of legs to support the weight since I don't think at that width the slats alone would hold the structure up.
I'm not too familiar with twins and have wondered this exact thing - do twins sleep in the same crib? My natural instinct would say, "yes" but then I'm sure there are those of the mind that think it might not be safe? I'm curious, what is the general consensus in the realm of multiples?
- Crystal