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How to Build an Indoor Play Area for Your Kids We have four very active children, so about a year ago we decided that we needed a place for them to play and burn energy in the winter and when they couldn't go outside. In our search for ideas we came across this blog , showing their indoor climbing wall and monkey bars. We really liked the idea and made our own very similar version.  Climbing Wall We used these rock climbing holds from Amazon for the climbing wall. We liked these holds because of the price, the natural rock look, and because they are installed with screws instead of with bolts. To make the wall we used 3/8" sheets of OSB (oriented strand board) that we glued and screwed together to create a double thick board. I made two sets so we could stack one on top of the other to make a taller wall. We used OSB because my parents had some extra and we could get it for free. Plywood would look nicer, but is more expensive. After attaching the boards we s...

Build your own Bunk Beds Toddler Size! In this post I provide the measurements I used to build bunk beds to fit toddler sized mattresses and link to the plans that I modified to build these toddler bunk beds. When we were expecting our third child we lived in a small apartment at the University of Utah. The apartment was great, but the bedrooms were small, so to maximize space we wanted to have our 5 year-old and 3 year-old use a bunk bed that would accommodate the smaller toddler size mattress. We searched all over and could not find anything, not just anything affordable, but nothing at all! Turns out toddler size bunkbeds can't be sold because of some regulation or another. So we decided to build our own. This was my first real building project and other than one shop class in 7th grade I haven't done a lot of work with wood. I did enlist the help of a friend who had worked quite a bit with wood and who had a lot of the tools. We started by choosing a straight forwa...