Before and After #12: The Nursery

 

 

 

 

This Before and After is more bittersweet than most, because instead of replacing something ugly with something nice, we're just replacing one nice thing with another.  But we converted our guest room into a room for the new baby. 

We were sorry to see the guest room go; we got a lot of use out of it in the last two and a half years.  At first I was unhappy, but eventually excitement about decorating a new nursery won out.  (Plus we still have the back room for guests.)

And I must say, it's great to have more storage space for toys and kid's things. The nursery is like a second playroom for Beatrice and Arthur, too.  In fact, lately it's the only room they want to play in.

We kept all the big changes we made the first time around - things like replastering the walls, removing the popcorn ceiling, painting, and adding trim.  I even kept the old rug and curtains.

I took cues from the gray rug and the gray walls and made the colors in this room navy, gray, and white, with touches of yellow.  We brought back in the old crib, thoroughly cleaned and with a new mattress and new bedding.

New toy bins, awaiting new baby toys

I moved all of the infant toys out of Beatrice and Arthur's room and into this one.  I also set up a dress-up station and an art table - of course right now both of these are for the older kids, not the newborn, but with all this new space we could afford to spread out the kids' things over both bedrooms.

(I might add that I got the new toy chest, the new art table, and the new green storage bins all from Craiglist. I love Craigslist so much.)

The dress-up station, by far the most popular destination in the house these days

The art table

Art table storage

I hung up this little mini-quilt I sewed and added some framed art (drawings of ships and castles, and the Aubrey Beardsley King Arthur prints that we had in the dining room of our old house).

And I sewed this blue, yellow, and gray fabric bunting.

I also made this rain mobile with twigs and tiny crystals. It's basically impossible to photograph properly (for me, anyway) but it looks nice in real life.

 

For the next few years, the baby will sleep here while Arthur and B stay in their room together.  Someday when B is older we'll give her this room while Arthur shares with the new baby, and then I guess we'll have to refurnish the bedrooms one more time.

 

Baby clothes

 

Quite a nice collection of shoes inherited from Arthur