BEAN'S REAL NURSERY

 BEFORE

AFTER

Since we didn't know whether bean was a boy or a girl, we had to design a gender-neutral nursery.  Always on a budget I spent an inordinate amount of time on craigslist trying to find the PERFECT dresser/changing table.  Being short this is no easy task!  I felt like goldilocks--this is too tall, this is too short, finally finding one that was JUST right.  We also bought our rocker off of craigslist and repurposed our old futon by buying a new charcoal cover.  By saving money on these items, and buying a cheap (but non-toxic and hardwood) crib from Walmart (gasp!) we were able to splurge on a non-toxic latex mattress for bean (she has the exact same mattress in her crib as we have on our bed!).  Like all the other bedrooms Michael ripped off the ceiling in this room and we had a new ceiling installed, complete with ceiling fan (so glad we did this!).  We also painted the entire room and installed new windows (as this was one of the few rooms that still had the original windows and we didn't want to risk lead paint dust in bean's room).  The birch treescape are vinyl decals we ordered off Etsy.  Poor Michael spent an entire day hanging them *exactly* to my 9-month pregnant self liking.  He deserves lots of praise.  Finding a rug turned out of the be the hardest task as our first 3 rugs were returned after emitting a smell that can only be described as sewage--seriously gross.  So we finally settled on this rug from Overstock, which also happens to be the rug in the nursery that served as my inspiration.

 We LOVE this room, love that we didn't break the bank creating it!  It is the perfect space for playing, sleeping and nursing.  To all those future mom's out there, I have to say that I NEVER use the rocking chair.  I find that nursing is so much easier on the futon as there is enough space for me, bean, and the boppy.  She would hit all sides of the rocking chair.  If I didn't have the space for both, I would go with a futon or oversized chair any day.  Plus when the baby needs rocking, there is always the yoga ball (oh the yoga ball--I hope to never see you again--but that will be saved for another post).

BEAN'S "NURSERY"

When we moved into our house Michael had the "grand" idea that we could gut the old pantry and turn it into a teeny tiny nursery.  While I am a lover of all things small, I mean how could I not be, this room was all of 5ft by 7ft.  Michael's theory was that by making the pantry a nursery we would be able to "contain the baby."  By "contain the baby" he really meant contain the baby stuff, but it still made for some funny reactions when he described his grand plan.  I got on board because this plan would allow us to turn the 2nd bedroom into an office/guest room/awesome play room.  So Michael got started on the demo.


As you can *kinda* see in this photo, the pantry was a mish mosh of wainscoting, tile, wallpaper, and shelving.  It should have been renamed the place where old construction material went to die.  The first step was to rip out the old ceiling tiles (something that Michael was also doing in the other two bedrooms).  With the ceiling down, he started to pull out the crazy old shelves and then the weird tile that only existed on parts of the wall.  That's when things got hairy, literally.  As the tile came down, so did the wall and what we found behind it was horsehair plaster.  A quick google search later and my 8 month pregnant self was causing a halt in the demo as we learned that horsehair plaster can have lead paint in it.  An at-home lead test confirmed our fears and I was quickly ushered out of the house for 3 days while Michael holed himself up in a 5x7 room in 95 degree weather ripping down plaster.  Just so you can picture this folks, he had the door closed and then plastic tarping sealing the door, the window also had to be closed so lead dust didn't escape the room.  He was outfitted with a mega respirator and a HEPA vacuum.

Three days later the walls were down and bean's future nursery looked either like a haunted house or the makings of a contemporary art exhibit (if you painted the wood lathe bright green).  With the plaster down, we (meaning the guys we hired to do this part) blueboarded the ceilings and the walls and primed the surfaces.  Michael then installed a chair rail to finish off the wainscoting and painted all the trim white--bye bye gumwood trim.  We finally settled on Whipple Blue for the nursery, not knowing whether we were having a boy or a girl and got started on trying to figure out what to do about the linoleum floor.  Since we intended to turn this into a 2nd bath down the line we didn't want to invest in new hardwood flooring, and being pregnant I was on a kick to only have natural fibers in the house so was turned off by a lot of carpeting.  We got sticker shock when we looked at getting a rug cut for the room and that's when brilliance hit!  We still had these huge jute rugs that we had been lugging around since we moved back to Boston from DC three years before!  With the help of a carpet knife, some carpet tape and a lot of sweat--we had our own free natural fiber wall-to-wall carpet!


Since this is turning into a mega post I will stop with the crazy details and get to the point!  After EVERYTHING was done we moved Bean's crib into the room and shocker, it didn't fit.  (I mean I guess it did if you count placing it up against the window--which I didn't because I had visions of my baby absailing out the window like her daddy did at boarding school).  So now we were stuck.  Our beautiful newly renovated nursery was no longer.  Thankfully my husband is pretty clever and decided the room would make a pretty kick-ass office.  So many many many trips to Home Depot later, he built and installed a custom wrap-around parson's desk.  I even have a whole spot just for crafts (and one of the parson's shelves was built to hold my sewing machine).  Some IKEA wall shelves and IKEA organization accessories finished off the look!  I contributed by making a new-sew roman shade from http://littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com/2009/02/make-shades-out-of-mini-blinds.html and Michael picked out the light-fixture (also from IKEA). 

VOILA--we have a legitimate office!  This has turned out to be the biggest and best surprise of our new home.  We LOVE the space and it has allowed us to stay organized, neat, and have room for our hobbies.  We both work in there together all the time, even bean gets in on the fun.  Plus, it locks!!!  This means that when bean is on the move we don't have to worry about her getting into all kinds of trouble.