For years Miss Butterfly has been asking for a loft bed. It’s not an illogical request since her room is small. And the bed she was in was a very old frame (4 generations used it) that doesn’t properly fit a modern mattress, so the mattress she was using was Mr. Ink’s when he was a kid. Not sure how old it was then. It was beat up and falling apart. There’s no way to get a modern mattress to fit, My mom and I measured and looked together. It’s just not possible. But, I’d been telling her I wasn’t purchasing her a loft bed. Especially since we’d gone to the trouble of painting her bedframe and setting it up.

The requests didn’t stop, and so while I was perusing our local Nextdoor site, I came upon someone trying to sell a loft bed frame for a low price. I contacted her and on Thursday evening we headed over there with the truck to look it over. Miss Butterfly deemed it worthy of her room, so we loaded it up in the truck, paid for it, and set off.

However, Mr. Ink and I were tired, it was getting late, and we decided we weren’t going to set that bed up until the next day. We just pulled the truck into the garage and called it good.

Miss Butterfly, excited about this new purchase, felt differently. She began rearranging her room, moving things about, and measuring to make sure the bed would fit where she wanted it. The next morning I received the following picture via text:

Somehow this child had managed to take down and move her mattress, box spring, and the entire old beframe. Then she’d gone out to the garage and brought in the pieces for the loft bed from the truck. And she began assembling it as well. With no instructions to be had.

After this photo, I received no more photos, but I did receive a text informing me that she was done and that there were two missing screws, but she thought it was fine. She refused to send pictures because she wanted it to be a surprise. I did ask her to please check with Mr. Ink at lunchtime that she had done everything correctly. She had.

When I got home, she was super proud to show me her new loft bed area, which she has decorated with christmas lights. She even managed to pull the mattress off the daybed in the guest room and get it up on that loft bed all by herself. That kid will get a job done when she wants a job done, no question!

Now I guess I need to consider finding another mattress for the daybed. And, at some point, I’ll shop for sheets so I can have the ones that match the daybed back. I am even considering getting her this cool teal colored chair I saw in a shop as a surprise, I think she’d get a kick out of that. I miss the pretty old bedframe and the more traditional looking room, but she’s certainly made this her own space, and I think that’s important too.