Sam's Car Bed & Room Before
My daughter has been requesting a car bed for quite a while now, so we thought it was time to get on that. This is not a surprise of course since we come from a long line of car people. Fortunately we are a couple steps closer to giving my littlest one the bed of her dreams. Sam has had a car bed for a while and they both love it. I am not usually in favor of giant pieces of plastic decorating the house, but this is an area where I have given in to make the kids and my inner child happy. The two are sharing a room now (it was their idea) so we needed a strategy that would still leave some space in there for moving around.
I measured and re-measured and decided that another twin size version was out of the question if we wanted to be able to open and close the door. Good thing Little Tykes makes a toddler size (it uses a crib size mattress). So like Sam’s bed I started scoping out toddler car beds on Craig’s List. It took a little while to find one not too far away and at a good price but we finally have it, assembled and all.
Option 1: Pink Pig Le Mans Porsche 917
Option 2: Hippie Le Mans Porsche 917
Sam’s car is based on the Gulf Livery Design for the LeMans Porsche 917, probably the most famous race car paint scheme. We originally really wanted to use the Pink Pig design but that would require painting the entire car bed pink first. Little Tykes does actually make a pink version, but only in a twin size. I was a little sad when we had to give up on this option. However we thought we could work with the Hippie design. We decided that we would leave the car blue and add the green pattern with white pin striping. We thought it was a fitting choice since it lives just down the road at the Simeone Automotive Museum (which by the way is an amazing place and well worth the trip).
Partially Masked
First Coat of Paint
First Coat of Paint
The process of painting involves lots of masking and some spray paint that is suitable for plastic. For masking tape we actually used electrical tape because it is more flexible for making curves. It worked really well! Unfortunately we didn’t have any newsprint so we used some rosin paper that we had in the basement. It was too thick and a pain to work with. Otherwise it is pretty straight forward. 2 coats of paint later and it was done. We then took off the tape and let it dry for 24 hours in the garage.
Hippie Car Bed w/ Pin-Striping
Rear of Car Bed
Next we decided that it definitely needed the white pin-striping between the two colors. We ended up using regular vinyl pin striping from the auto parts store (1/4″ wide to be exact). We used almost 2 40′ rolls, but at about $5 a roll, it was a good investment. It took Mr. S. about 1 1/2 hours to carefully place it and burnish it.
So far we have spent about $60 for the project, $40 for the car bed, $10 for the pin-striping and $6 for the spray paint (one can is plenty for the small bed) and $4 for the electrical tape.
There is still quite a lot to do. We need to do some rearranging of furniture in the bedroom and move some stuff into the playroom (Maisie’s old room). I also need to make a bedspread with a big #3 on it and some interesting green patterning to match the frame. Not sure when it will be finished, but the girl is getting pretty impatient for her bed, so stay tuned.
the bed looks great! i too have a little girl that wants a car bed, and i really want to paint it so that i don’t have to stare at the red and blue all day. would you please share the type of paint you used? i want to make sure i get the right stuff. thanks!
Hi Erin and welcome! For Maisie’s bed we used a Rustoleum spray paint product that listed plastic as one of the suitable surfaces (from Home Depot). For Sam’s bed we used a spray paint especially for plastic (similar to this one: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202041131/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=spray+paint&storeId=10051). We were planning on using the same thing, but our Home Depot stopped carrying the plastic paint. You could also check out Michael’s if you have one nearby. They carry a different brand and I think it includes a line for plastic. I have to say that the one we used for Maisie’s covered and has adhered as well as the one for Sam’s. You do definitely want to give it several days to dry before using it. Hope that helps!