DIY Baby Gym - Life as Mrs. Wilson

27 January, 2017

DIY Baby Gym


Finding baby items that we like has been a pretty big challenge for my husband and me. After spending a few unsuccessful months trying to find a baby gym that we liked for our son, we decided to build our own! We found a basic design we liked and my amazing husband came up with a plan. Because I've had a few people ask me about it, I decided to make a step by step guide on how we made our baby gym.


*Materials needed:
  •  1 x 2 oak board (they sell these in one long piece as well as in the 2 ft size. We bought the long piece and cut 4 pieces at 2 ft each)
  • 5/8 in x 2 1/2 ft dowel
  • Two 1/4 inch dowels
  • Annie Sloan Clear Soft Wax
  • String/Rope


























Directions:

1. After cutting your oak board into four pieces, sand it down until the edges are smooth.

2. On your four boards, drill a 5/8 inch hole 3 inches from the top.  This is the hole the large dowel will go through.

3. Drill a 1/4 inch hole 10 inches from the bottom of each board. This is the hole your rope will go through.


4. 1/2 inch from each end, drill a 1/4 inch hole on the large dowel for the smaller dowels to go through.

5. Sand the ends of the dowels so they are completely smooth.


6. Brush the wax on each piece of wood. This will help seal the wood and aid against any splinters or water damage. It also helps keep the wood lasting longer (and also defines the grain of the wood, which we love!)


7. Next, you are just going to assemble all of the wooden pieces together. Put the large dowel through the holes you drilled at the top of each board. They should fit rather snug as you slide it through. Once that's together, place the 1/4 inch dowels on the outside in the holes of the larger dowel.

8. Pull the rope through the bottom holes and tie knots at each end. I cut my rope to be about 12 inches long, but you can really make it whatever size you'd like depending on how tall you want the gym to stand.


9. This is totally optional, but I thought it would be fun to make the toys that hung from the gym. It was super quick and easy; all I did was get a few wooden teething rings, some string, and different sized/colored wooden beads. I created a little pattern with the beads and strung them together. 


Overall, it took us about 2 hours total to complete, including the little toys. We had such a fun time putting this baby gym together and love having something for our son that we built ourselves. It's simple, neutral, and our baby sure seems to enjoy it as well!






*We got all of the wood from Lowes, the small rope and unfinished wooden beads from Michaels. I got the colored beads and string from target, and the teething rings from Amazon!

1 comment:

  1. Oh this is fantastic! I wanted something like this for when Melody was born but of course nothing was around at the time! Keeping this baby no.2 though! xo

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