Add 160 square feet to your tiny, high-ceilinged apartment without consulting an architect or getting a permit thanks to DIY loft kits that fall somewhere between a renovation and the lofted beds you can snag at IKEA. A company called Expand Furniture makes the process of creating a mezzanine level as easy as installing a large piece of furniture, with models ranging from a bed platform to a entire extra room.
The three kits don’t come cheap, ranging from about $1,500 to over $4,000, but they’re still less pricey than permanent additions, and don’t require owning your apartment or getting your landlord’s permission to remodel. The DIY Loft Bed Kit has enough room for a mattress, nightstands and a bit of free floor space, and takes just four hours for two people to set up.
The modular Vancouver DIY Loft T8 Kit is height- and width-adjustable, and you can add on all sorts of accessories, like stairs of varying steepness, skylights and a variety of guard rails. The priciest kit, the New York DIY Loft T15, is large enough to be used as an entire elevated bedroom or office. All of the kits ship flat-pack from North American warehouses.
Expand Furniture also offers a range of impressive transforming items for compact spaces, including murphy beds, pop-up coffee tables and bookcases that flip around to reveal either a fold-down work surface or a mattress, all in one slim unit. The website is full of fun stuff for small-apartment-dwellers to fantasize about purchasing, if only they had $8,000 to drop on a king-sized bed hidden behind a sofa.
