When we moved into our house we were two. Just over a year later we were three. Bedrooms we had, but a cute baby room, we did not, and we needed to deal with it ASAP.
Having sunk everything we had and ever will have for the next century into financing the purchase of our home, we needed to think shoestring. Thankfully, my husband was willing to try, fail, try, patch, try and finally succeed at the many DIYs involved in the creation of our gal’s little haven.
Inevitably, the operative acronym behind “shoestring” is DIY, and those mentioned below I will explain in installments over the next little while here on Style Sheet.
For now, I’d like to share with you our overall, hard knuckle-scraping work in the baby room effort, to which I’m sure many of you can relate.
The “Before”
What you’re looking at is a photo of the third-floor baby room as it appeared three days after we assumed ownership (before the previous owners vacated). It didn’t look this bad when we finally moved in three months later, but it was not the baby lair you can see further down.
That odd little sink is the main reason we chose the third floor as the family sleeping quarters. Instead of capping the plumbing and waiting for a windfall to turn this room into a master en suite, I had a hunch that we may be able to put it to more immediate use as a wet baby station (see below). And boy was it ever a great idea – the convenience of not running to the second-floor – and only – bathroom, was more than worth the effort.
The “After”
What we did:
- Peeled the wallpaper
- Sanded and urethaned the floors
- Replaced the saggy plaster ceilings with beadboard
- Patched the old plaster walls and painted
- Built in shelving and sourced baskets for storage (below)
- Built in the wet changing station (below)
- Sourced economical window treatments
- Sourced vintage furniture (rocking chair and "Space-age Modern" baby chair in white. The pink "Junior Panton" chair -- a splurge -- was a gift!)
- Splurged on a fabulous convertible OEUF crib (pictured in toddler form) from Ella & Elliot in Toronto
The room is quite small and hence doesn’t allow for
much storage/furniture. Lining one of the walls with shelving that we
stocked with deep baskets, created a great storage system that can
easily be rearranged and adjusted as the child grows. This DIY is
truly easier than it looks (details to come in my next baby room
installment).
This wet baby station is another of my husband’s DIYs. Because of its size, building in specifically for the room was the best option to maximize on space.
This station is built of plywood and affixed to the wall. The construction is very simple (details will be covered in one of the following installments of my baby room series).
What do you think? Have you done something similar for your little bundle of joy?
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