Dream On Me Classic Toddler Bed review

A month and a day or so ago we got the Dream On Me Classic Toddler Bed delivered to us. It showed up in a big old box and came with a rather large set of instructions on how to assemble it.

It’s been in use over a month now and I think we’ve got a pretty good feel for it.

Assembling the Dream On Me Classic Toddler Bed

I didn’t really have any reservations starting until I got to the part where you have to manually drill screws into the wood to secure the front and back segments where the middle legs are. At that point it became clear that what I had almost done would have screwed everything up.

Make sure you don’t screw that part up. That’s the only gotcha point at which you might realize at the end that you’ve done everything wrong.

Assembly went pretty easily (other than the 8? screws in wood I was afraid I would break,) up until the point I needed to put the cross beams in.

There was nothing particularly difficult about it, but you do need two people to do it, or you can do it like I did and pull your brain trying to assemble the thing.

And then the assembly snag hit

I was coming into the finish thinking things were going well. I attached the headboard. I attached the left side of the bed’s roll-out prevention arm, I went to attach the right side and there was no way. The holes didn’t align.

I turned the headboard around thinking perhaps there was a set way that needed to go and only managed to now make the other arm not work. OK. Break out the tape measure and sure enough the holes were somewhere between 1/8th and 1/4th off on the offending hole side.

I verified that all the midlevel holes on the frame were the same, and that I couldn’t have put the headboard at the foot, nope. I’d received a faulty product. After an hour or so of assembly I was looking at maybe having to return it. Blergh!

Calling customer support

I called the company fairly early in the morning, got in touch with someone who said she was going to forward me a form to fill out and send back. I was going to head into work so I got all the stuff I needed together (part # that was incorrectly built, receipts, pictures next to a ruler,) and headed off to work.

Several hours go by, I check my spam, nothing. I called up and got someone else, told what had happened, the email came about four minutes later. All good. Not sure if I was in a queue of “I’ll get to this guy after coffee,” or what but it was just a form email.

Filled it out, got notification a replacement headboard was shipping, bam.

Now with the right part in hand!

I plopped it in, the holes were in the right position, yes… this was going to be perfect… except somehow I had one incorrect screw. It just wasn’t long enough. I started going through every screw I could pull out and verifying that I hadn’t put the long screw in a short, but accommodating, hole.

I’m not sure what happened, but that long screw is MIA. Whether it shipped incorrectly or more likely I placed it incorrectly (pretty sure I did a count at the beginning,) but I’m now left with an almost perfect assembly.

Fortunately it’s not vital to the mission at hand as that rail is against a wall.

And how did it work?

Every kid’s going to be different. Me and Maggie had a couple of fights about sleeping there when she got angry she wanted to go sleep in her crib, which was not going to happen due to it being upstairs now in the temp baby area.

For a kid that moves around a lot the rails are not particularly effective. Last night I managed to see Maggie sit up, face the wall, and fall backwards out of the bed.

I’m not sure that the solution is to engineer a gate, but it’s something I’m going to have to address (probably just slap a pillow in that area).

She now puts herself to bed and seems comfortable with the mattress we got.

Dream On Me Classic Toddler Bed overall

It’s a pretty decent toddler bed, but it’s not engineered to withstand a whole lot more than that. While I don’t have the instructions in front of me it seems the stated limit is about 60 pounds.

Cleaning under it’s a breeze as, once assembled, it’s pretty easy to maneuver.

For the price, I’d kind of liked it to come with a mattress, but I’m told that I may be smoking something when I say that.

The Dream On Me Classic Toddler Bed is available in six colors from Amazon