Imagine being able to fall asleep on the train that took Harry Potter, along with other witches and wizards, to the school of magic that Muggle children around the world long to go to? One lucky little boy gets to do exactly that because his parents transformed a Thomas bed into the Hogwarts Express!
The above picture is what the bed frame originally looked like. As you can see, the colors and face on the front are completely wrong for the magical train that takes students to school every September 1st, but Gabriella and her husband saw the potential despite these differences.
The face had to go so they popped it off, which was easy enough to do and allowed them to recreate the look for the front of the famous steam engine. They wanted their son’s toddler bed to look as authentic as possible, which meant the stack above Thomas’s face had to be modified.
They did this by removing the tall stack (forgive me, I don’t know the official name for this piece) using an electric saw. They then sanded down this area to smooth it out before they proceeded to the next step of creating the short knob that is seen here on the Hogwarts Express.
The recreated the shorter knob by buying round pieces of wood and sanding them down until they perfectly fit within the edges of the stack they removed. The secured the wooden knob by screwing it into the plastic.
They painted the entire frame using black and red paint for the body, yellow paint for the headlight, silver paint for the wheels, strip over the back, and knobs over there front, and a pale grayish paint for the windows.
It looks to me that they used white vinyl numbers for the 5972 on the front of the faceplate, like the kind you can use on a mailbox that is a sticker, and gold vinyl letters that look to be about two inches tall for the HOGWARTS EXPRESS. These can be found at home repair stores like Lowes or Home Depot, or here on Amazon.
Gabriella and her husband added one more touch to their son’s room, something that was perfect – a brick tunnel to make it look like the train was coming out of the wall. Brilliant! This end result was the ultimate in repurposing.
Want to create your own Hogwarts Express toddler bed? I’m happy to say that you can still buy it on Amazon, and you can see it by clicking this link.
