Our Little Boy's Nursery

It is finally completed, only 4 months after his birth! ... Meh! He has only just started sleeping in there, he didn't need it til now! ;o)

We are really, really pleased with how it looks and love spending time in there now. I really enjoy sitting in the nursing chair with the low light lamp on and rocking him to sleep. It's so soothing!

So here are some before photos so you can see what it used to look like...

 

These photos are from when we first moved in. Yes, the radiator was indeed silver. In the first photo you can catch a glimpse of the wonderfully painted pine cladding that was covering every ceiling on the first floor. We were really dreading what that could be hiding, but thankfully it was nothing more than woodchip, so we just reboarded and plastered over. You can see how much the previous owners loved their orange pine too. 

Then when we were pregnant with our first baby we did the nursery for the first time. Forgive the bad photo, it was before I got into photography, and this crazy angle was the best I could do to fit as much in the picture as possible. 

unfortunately, our first baby didn't make it home and passed away shortly after birth, so the room remained untouched for months. Then it became a storage room for everything that had no official place. I don't have any photos of that though. 

Now for the "afters" :o)

The cot and white unit are from IKEA and the nursing chair was a baby shower gift from my girlfriends. We bought the bedding, wallpaper border, and curtains from Mamas and Papas, but from the outlet store so it was 75% off. SCORE! 

And, not forgetting the cupboard / wardrobe / closet that we made over...

And here is the occupant himself...

Thank you for reading! :o)

Sarah. x

If you liked this post you might be interested in these ones too:

Nursery Storage Makeover
Wasted Space to Memo Place
Toy Organisation and Playroom Love
Hidden Mini Office in An IKEA Besta Unit
Master Bedroom Makeover

Nursery Storage Makeover

Huzzah!! The nursery cupboard/closet/wardrobe storage has finally been made over. Behind those doors lies a far more organised and space-efficient, erm, space. The only thing left to do is touch up the bits where the hinges for the old doors were.

Remember what it looked like before?

The louvre doors had been taken off by this point, but they were an awful shade of orange-brown the same as the trim seen here. Couldn't wait to get my tin 'o' white out!

So what was wrong with this space? Where do I start?!
1. It was dirty looking.
2. Not enough shelving.
3. Existing shelves stuck out too far and interfered with anything hanging on the rail.
4. The rail was dirty.
5. Wood parts were cakky orange-brown stained.
6. Doors were the same cakky orange.

So, the first thing we did was take out all of the shelving and reposition making better use of the space. We also added an extra shelf. All the shelves were cut down to a shallower depth, using the containers I am using as drawers as a guide. This left much more space in front for hanging clothes, which now hang on a shiny new chrome rail.

I painted the walls and ceiling with white emulsion and the wood parts with white eggshell. My husband made an excellent job of the doors I think and they look much cleaner and modern than the old louvre doors did. If I can find a photo of the old doors I'll post one later.

Once I'd battled through this pile of all his clothing and other wardrobe fillers...

I was ready to put things back in a more orderly fashion.

 

Ahhhh... Much better!

I also have a little (lot) more storage in the form of my trusty IKEA Expedit 2x2 unit. 

The boxes inside are "Skubb" and hold so much stuff it's unreal. We use them in the kid's toy storage Expedits downstairs too. 

Top left we have sleepsuits, rompers, and vests. 

Top right is his socks, shoes, dribble bibs, hats and swim things.

Now, because the Skubb boxes are so deep I've used the Skubb drawer dividers inside here to help layer up. Here's what I mean. Take one out and you can see his sleeping bags stored underneath.

The bottom right is trousers.

And the bottom left is another Skubb drawer divider holding his tops with knitwear and fitted sheets underneath.

Let's take another look at my his fab new cupboard...

Before & After

 I'm so proud! :o) Now I just need to put the rest of his hanging items up and we're done. Here's what's in there,

Top left - plastic box containing cloth nappy equipment not currently in use (spare inserts, too girly/big, etc.)
Top right - a plastic container with clothes that are too big right now.
Middle shelves - Green containers on sale for £1.49 each at Dunelm Mill. Clockwise from top left they house: nothing / empty (yey!), spare hangers, stock of baby wipes, spare nursery wallpaper borders.
Bottom shelf - 2 massive Skubb (recurring theme here?) containers with all the clothes that he no longer fits into, which I intend to go through and put on eBay. Sob!
Front - two out of three baskets I've had for ages. Nappies on the left, baby towels on the right.

If you liked this post you might be interested in these ones too:

Our Little Boy's Nursery
Wasted Space to Memo Place
Toy Organisation and Playroom Love
Hidden Mini Office in An IKEA Besta Unit
Master Bedroom Makeover

Two Small Jobs to Check Off

2. Sorting out an essentials pouch for my handbag / nappy bag.
CHECK!
3. Getting together a kiddies essentials pack for keeping in the car.
CHECK!

Now I just need to work on a place to store all the things I need to keep close at hand while I'm about the house. I know what kinds of things I need to keep there, but now where I am going to put them. This will require a little thought.

Here's what I did today.

This is the bag of stuff we will keep in the car for the kids. The logic behind this is that we're trying to shave time off our leaving the house routine. It's annoying that we have to think about what we have to take each time. Completely going through our one nappy bag to check we have all items takes too long. Partly because we often have to do it last minute. I am hoping that knowing we have this bag in the car will enable us to get out of the house faster at least for little trips.

In it, I have packed a couple of bottles of water, jumpers, spare clothes, nappies and wipes.

The other small job I tackled today was the cobbling together of my handbag bits and bobs. When I leave the house I either take my main nappy bag or if I am lucky enough to get to leave on my own for a while I will take a handbag. It's irritating having to completely empty all the pockets to switch between bags each time I swap over.

This problem has been fixed by getting all these bits into one easily portable cosmetics bag.

Ignore how tatty it is. I will keep an eye out for a nicer one on my travels. Here's what's in it. My apologies to any male readers - there are tampons and sanitary towels in here...

OMG! Blogger will not display that last photo the right way around no matter what I do! GRR!

Anyhoo, in this little handy bag, I keep an important key, comb, pen, paracetamol, aspirin, Rennies, tampons, contact lenses, sanitary towels, vaseline, hair bobble and grips, sweeteners, breast pads, plasters, clear nail varnish, tissues, mirror compact.

Most handy when out and about!

Here's what the other half has been doing today:

Those are the cupboard doors for the nursery wardrobe. We also went shopping for hinges and handles. Hopefully, the doors will be put up by tomorrow. If not I can at least get his clothes put away because the shelving is in place and just needs to fully dry overnight. WOOP! We're sooo close to bottoming this massive job and I am excited!! :o)

Can you help?

Are you thinking that you have a great way of doing some of these things I am sorting out? If you are please, please tell me! Do you have a blog post of your own that might help me? If you do I would love to see it! Just leave me a comment with a link to the relevant blog post or a description of your helpful ideas and I will repost and link to any that I use in my blog. I am really new to this and relying heavily on inspiration from blog land!

I have been busy. Honest!

It's been a fair while since I posted anything, but that's because I was thinking that I should wait until something gets finished before telling you about it. Then it occurred to me today that if I always do that then this blog will just be a series of massive gaps with the occasional "here's what I've got done" posts. Rubbish!

So, here's what I have been up to this past few days...

I decided to tackle the airing cupboard at the top of the stairs and see if I could find a cheaper alternative to the expensive three-section laundry basket I was coveting from Next. 

As you can see from the next photo, the inside isn't very tidy and could do with some thorough organisation and the relocation of several redundant or weirdly placed items. The plastic box on the middle shelf is actually my sewing stuff. I have no idea why this is kept with the towels, so don't ask. There must have been a logical reason at the time of putting it there!

Well, no thrifty alternative was forthcoming, so I splashed the cash and paid the £30 for the laundry basket. So far I am very impressed!! In fact, it could be the best £30 I've spent and that makes me depressed. Seriously though, it's amazing. Once the hubby was trained with regards to which colour clothing goes in which section (no I'm not joking) the system works really well!

No more having to sort the washing to find out that you don't have enough for the load you wanted to do. Just peek inside the cupboard and if the washing reaches the top of it's hamper section then it's ready to go! But there's no need to transfer the washing into a separate laundry carrying basket - oh no! Simply pick up the relevant section using the handles and carry it to the washer that way. Brilliant!

I am in love with this laundry basket.

Yes, you may mock me. I am aware of how sad that is.

Looking at that last photo it would seem that my airing cupboard would benefit from a little freshening up. I feel a lick of paint coming up, and maybe some flooring...

Speaking of painting cupboards. I've been doing the inside of my baby boy's cupboard/wardrobe/closet to make it all nice and clean looking. The husband has kindly adapted and added shelving to make it more practical and he's also knocking up some new doors from sheets of MDF.

Here's what it looks like right now:

It just needs a coat or two more of paint on the inside, the shelves need painting and the doors need painting and putting on.

This is our first priority right now cause our little boy is rapidly getting too big for his moses basket and needs to be put into his cot in his room very soon.

Here's what his room looks like right now. A mess! :o)

Well, I've run out of steam for this evening, but I have more photos to show you of half-finished projects we're on with at the moment. There's also the inside of my daughter's newly rearranged clothes drawers and a forthcoming large decorating project to tell you about.

Til next time! It won't be as long this time. I'm still learning! :o)

Mwah! x

Flitty McFlitterson

You know what I'm doing? I'm flitting. I do that. A LOT. I start one thing full of enthusiasm and before you know it I've had a really fabulous idea for something else and *blink* I've flitted onto that thing, leaving the first thing half done.

So far I have loads of half done organising and decluttering projects on the go. The office was the only thing I kind of finished and even then, the cupboard in that room has been left on the sidelines.

My son's room will be the next thing to finish, which is fairly big. We have pencilled in this Friday to make a start on the cupboard remodelling. My husband will measure it to get the extra shelving I need and when that's in I will just paint it all white to freshen it up. I've bought the 'drawers' i needed to use as storage. I just need to get a couple more on my next trip to IKEA.

To whet your appetite here's a photo of my son's cupboard/wardrobe/closet and nursery before I started to get everything in place.