The more time I spend making things for our home, the more I realize nothing stays the same. Kids grow, needs shift, tastes change, trends pass and what once felt beautiful or functional can suddenly stop being either.

Longtime readers may remember that three years ago, my handy husband and I built a wooden stuffed animal “zoo” with bungee cording as the bars. I’d painted it red with white letters that spelled out OUR ZOO, and it did a great job of keeping the stuffed animals neatly in one place. It also doubled as a nightstand for our son.

Over time, however, that poor zoo took a beating. The kids and their friends kept climbing inside during rounds of hide-and-seek so it was getting pretty wobbly, and the top was covered with pencil scribbles. (Note to children: don’t include your own name in your graffiti if you don’t wish to be identified.)

Our son is almost nine and doesn’t care for stuffed animals, so I decided it was time to move the zoo to our daughter’s bedroom. (She uses stuffies as students when she plays school.)

But first, it needed to be, uh, “sturdied up.”

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