Materials: Sniglar Changing Table
Description: Before we had our baby, I had planned on her sleeping in her crib from the start. Yeah, I should have known better. The first night home we set up the hand-me-down pack-n-play in our bedroom and attempted to let her sleep in that. I think I made it through 2 night feedings before I gave in and put her in our bed. And thus started my complete and utter lack of sleep.
See, our bed is the queen size Ikea Malm and in no world is a queen-sized bed big enough for 3 cats, 2 adults and 1 newborn baby. We looked at co-sleepers and couldn't find anything that worked because our bed was now too low to the ground. We attempted to use these foam rails but they ended up just taking up more room. We needed a co-sleeper badly and finally decided if we can't find one, build one. But hey, if you can find an Ikea product to hack into one... even better! And that's just what I did.
I hacked the Sniglar Baby Changing Table into a Co-Sleeper and finally I could sleep.
First I sewed sleeves for all the top, bottom and vertical rails. I then sewed the side panels which consisted of a top sleeve, bottom sleeve and netting. Next I sewed the vertical sleeves to the panels.
Then I fit it all the sewn rails on to the right bars. To assemble I put all the vertical pieces in, then the top and bottom pieces, laying them out ready to be assembled. I assembled according to the Sniglar instructions except I did the non-sewn side last and left the top rail off all together.
When completing the assembly, I left off the top shelf and the top crossbar that has no fabric on it as they aren't used at all. Don't worry, this doesn't compromise the structure at all. It is hard to get the bottom shelf into the slits with the thin fabric covering them, but it will go if you've found the right satiny thin fabric. The bottom rail with no fabric also takes some work to get on since you're not assembling the way Ikea intended.
To make the mattress I used 4" foam cut to 26 3/4" x 24 1/2". I set the foam into the Sniglar and marked where the uncovered bottom rail hits. Then I cut a groove the length of the foam as wide as the rail and as deep as necessary to get the foam to lay flat.
I made some sheets using cotton fabric that went nicely with the co-sleeper and our bedding.
If you want to see more details of the Co-sleeper, hop on over to our flickr set or see more here.
~ Siouxzi Donnelly
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