Making Room for Babies

The babies aren't going to be here for several more months, and yet we have had to do so much already to make room for those sweet little angels. First things first, they need their own room. Since I had recently redecorated our home office, and we rarely use the guest room, we decided to convert the guest room into a nursery. Easier said than done.

We had to move the futon into the home office (where it barely fits); move my crafts/drafting table and drawers into our bedroom; get rid of a large entertainment stand with a TV, DVD player, game console and games (and ended up taking it to Victor's mom's house, for a playroom we plan to have there); and still have a full-size 'junk closet' to clear out. Oh, yeah, and to make room in the home office for the futon, we had to move a large bookshelf out (which we hope to find use for in the nursery).

Once the old guest room was cleared out, we were ready to start on creating a peaceful nursery for two. We chose a light sage green as the main color, complemented by a subtle creamy ivory. The colors are divided by a white chair rail running across all walls, about half-way up in height. We are re-purposing one of our bedroom dressers for the babies' room, since it's huge and already white. We bought new glass knobs to make it more appropriate, and will also use it as the changing table for the babies. The windows are covered in silk green striped drapes, which we hope to keep for a while since they don't scream 'baby room'. We don't yet have the cribs, but we plan to get them soon, and they will balance the room a bit since their finish is a dark espresso color. The plan is to have some white and some dark furniture in the room, so that it's not all too 'matchy'. The only disappointment we've faced so far is that the room barely looks big enough to accommodate one of those large cushy rocking chairs anymore. We are hoping we can still sneak one in after the cribs are in, depending on how we arrange the furniture; otherwise, we'll have to get more creative in our seating options.

In addition, we decided to replace most of our wall-to-wall carpeting with laminate flooring to reduce the allergens in our home, for both our benefit and the babies'. That project alone required us to move all the furniture around and dust and re-dust everything during and after the renovation. We ended up installing the new flooring in our great room and hallways, and have left carpeting in the bedrooms and home office. We are so happy we made the change, though. It looks great and we have gotten rid of so much dust already, which was our goal.

Photos will follow shortly.