Our Gender Neutral Nursery

So as I got farther along in my pregnancy we wanted to set up a nursery in our home (as most people do) We purposely picked the room next to the master bedroom so that when he officially starts sleeping in the room he is close to us. This is also the smallest room of our three bedroom house- and its a pretty small room but I think we made it work. 

I knew I wanted some sort of focal wall against the largest wall in the room. Originally I wanted to do wallpaper- some sort of mountain theme but I was shocked at the price when I started looking at the cost. Also as a millenial who spent a large portion of her childhood removing 1970's style wallpaper I was dying inside just a little bit to think that I would be putting more wallpaper on walls. Instead I decided to do a shiplap wall. We were already purchasing and making shiplap for our master bathroom so I had my husband measure the wall and we just bought more material for this wall. 

My overall goal for this nursery was "neutral and functional" I wanted decor that could be used with multiple children. Eventually we want to have more than one child and I don't want to redecorate if we end up having a girl later. Plus I'm honestly not a big fan of pastel colors. 

The nursery itself was already painted gray when we moved in the house- most of our house was painted "Polished Gray" by the previous owner- thankfully I'm a fan. I think the gray of the other three walls contrasts the white shiplap wall quite well. We got all new carpet installed in the upstairs of our house a few weeks after we moved in because the previous owners had DESTROYED it and it was disgusting. 

My in laws had purchased the crib for us very early in our pregnancy. I purposely requested a crib that could convert to a  toddler bed. Because we were doing alot of other projects (see this entire blog :) ) we didn't set it up until I was about 35 weeks pregnant. I found a cute gray mobile from a buy nothing facebook that I am apart of. 

The Glider/recliner we've had for many years and brought (begrudgingly on my part) with us from the midwest. It is a bit large for the space but I figured we already own it and I didn't want to purchase something new just for that to sit in our garage/shipping container. I did purchase a slip cover for it because it is an ugly beige color. The slip cover was a light gray color so that it would blend in with the theme of the room. 

The dresser was probably the hardest part of the whole room. Originally we considered purchasing a dresser from ikea. As a woodworkers daughter this slightly pains me. I'm not a huge fan of MDF prefabricated furniture, but I also didn't want to purchase a quality piece of furniture just to have it destroyed by a future toddler. We ended up going to ikea to purchase the piece I had picked out online and it wasn't available.  A few weeks later I ended up finding a dresser for free on the buy nothing facebook site that I am apart of. The pros to this was that 1. It was free, 2. It was solid wood and better quality. However it was a bit big for the space and because it was solid wood it was really heavy. My husband and our neighbor ended up having to get it up the stairs. I debated painting it but honestly I had so many other projects going and I just wanted to get the dresser upstairs to start putting clothes into it that I decided against that. 

For the dresser I purchased some drawer dividers from ikea. Baby clothes are so small and the dividers were helpful to seperate clothes not only by size but also between onsies and sleepers. I seperated the clothes in each drawer by size so that as he grew we could move the clothes that didn't fit him out of the dresser and move the clothes that did fit him to the top drawers. 

I wanted small shelves that I could put cute decor items on. I liked the idea of being able to switch out items for seasons and as he grew. I went to a friends house and she had these cute white shelves. I looked at them a little closer and discovered "I could totally make these myself" (much to my husbands dismay). The shelves were made with a 1X2, 1x3 and a 1x4 and white paint. Most of them were made with scraps that we had left over from previous projects. I liked the simplicity of them! 

I had seen so many cute name signs on Etsy but the crafter in me just couldn't spend the $100+ on them. I wanted something that was cute and could grow with him through the years. I also wanted something that would be easy to move if we moved him into another room or a new house in the years to come. Living in the PNW I loved the idea of mountains and trees. I purchased a circular piece of wood from Home Depot and stained it. We used 1/4" plywood and cut out the mountains so they would stand out. I purchased the fox and the trees from hobby lobby. Using my Cricut I cut his name out and applied the vinyl to the wood. This should've been a fairly easy project but it took me forever because I ended up way over thinking it. Overall I'm happy with how it turned out- if I owned a laser cutter I would've cut his name out of wood instead of vinyl to make it stand out more. (I know cricut can cut balsa wood but I haven't had successful results with it yet).

Overall I'm happy with how the nursery turned out. Now that he is here we find it very functional but cute at the same time. I purposely left spaces on the wall to decorate as he grows. I for sure want to put up some of the pictures from his newborn shoot. Right now the two biggest items we use are the rocker and the dresser as the changing table but I know we will use the crib more as he gets older (right now it typically holds swaddles and blankets)