Convertible cribs...Child Craft/Baby Italia/Simmons?

[Debbie Due with Deux]

Hi -

We're expecting twins in April (and we aren't planning on having more!) so we decided to go with convertible cribs. Denise and Alan's top picks seem to be Child Craft, Baby Italia, and Simmons (and maybe Sorelle?) that fit our budget. Anyone out there have feedback on any of these?! (Child Craft seems to have a 15 year warranty, which seems great, while the others are a year or less. Nevertheless, I don't see too many people singing the praises of Child Craft.)

Thanks!
Deb

[Caroline99]

I've only seen the Simmons ones at BRU and was not too impressed with the quality -- all the things that the book discourages -- exposed plastic hardware, loud releases, etc. Just my experience.

Caroline

[cara1]

Babi Italia, Babi Italia. Though you may see my recent post about us having some trouble 10 mos later with the side rail, this crib is sooo sturdy and the hidden hardware is a huge plus. The Simmons and Childcrafts seemed so flimsy. Our Babi italia was even cheaper than the others. We did buy a second crib for my MIL, though, and we found a $200 Bonavita which is extraordinarily similar to the Babi Italia, so look for sales.

[smbrch]

We bought Babi Italia convertible cribs for our twins -- they are due to arrive in 2 weeks, so we really haven't been able to try the cribs out yet, but we really like the way they look, and they seem pretty sturdy. We did have some trouble getting the side rails to work smoothly, but that was probably due more to our assembly technique than the cribs themselves. Given that we were buying two cribs, we just couldn't see spending too much on cribs, but we didn't want to sacrifice on quality. The Babi Italia seemed to fit the bill just right for us.

We are actually not too sure we will use the convertible feature -- depending on how much room you have and whether you will have the kids in the same room or not down the line, you may need to go with bunk beds or some such thing (we haven't quite figured that out yet -- we are having boy/girl twins, so we don't know how long they will stay in the same room, etc.). We ended up buying the convertibles anyway because we liked the way the Picket Fences collection looked. If we had liked a non-convertible style (with a drawer) in the Babi Italia, we probably would have gone for that.

Make sure you get the twins discount at BRU when you buy -- I think it's 10% or 20% when you buy two of the same big ticket items. We also got them to give it to us on the 2 dressers we got, even though they weren't exactly the same, so it's worth a shot.

Good luck!