Choosing to not find out the gender of our baby until delivery was one of the most fun decisions we made in our pregnancy. It is something we will probably continue to do as we grow our family. This choice reflected our design ideas for the nursery, too! A big reason we wanted to wait to find out was the force of keeping things neutral. This way, if we are able to continue to have children, the things we have & the room would match any of our babies with a few added touches here & there. We are still adding things to this space, but here are the details & intentions we put into this dream room.

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In this blog post you will happily find…

+ the basics before filling the nursery

+ my two challenges, the big & the budget

+ intentional & purposeful decorating

The basics before filling the nursery.

This nursery has been a long time coming. I mean a very long time. It has been dreamed up, schemed up, planned out & changed many times — all in our heads, that is. Now it was finally time to put it into action. I will start with the very basics. Just like every space in this home, it needed the works just to feel fresh, clean & our own. We…

laid new floors — the same vinyl floating planks that we did through out the entire upstairs to keep the flow consistent. We removed the dirty old carpet this room had, but sadly the original hardwoods underneath were in horrible condition. Just let the rest of the upstairs! Therefore, a new, fresh flooring it is. This is the space our babies will be crawling around, spending time learning & growing. I love the idea of keeping things original, but in this phase of life, keeping things clean & easy to clean is most important to me.

installed new trim — again, the same style as the upstairs trim we are installing. We are going with a more modern, farmhouse style since the previous trim was small & dated. We figured adding something with a bit more character, yet clean lines, would be a good compliment to the beautiful, original tall trim.

painted every surface — ceiling (ceiling paint from SW), walls (alabaster & tricorn black from SW) & trim/doors (into the gloaming from SW)

Our decisions behind these selections are simple, probably not worth sharing but incase someone is interested, I might as well just add this. The floors & trim paint were simple because they are our selections for the house as a whole. I want this home to be consistent & flow together with each room having just a slightly different “personality” you could say. Then come the decision for the black & white wall theme. Both paint choices are the ones we plan on using throughout the house. For the nursery, however, we wanted both black & white on the walls in a simple yet captivating way, for a baby that is. Gentry has proven our decision for the black accents walls a good one, he sits in his crib & stairs at the corners where the colors meet. I do love the feeling & peace an airy white room gives, but I believe adding the black creates coziness in a big space, interest with the color blocks & neutral options for both a boy & girl room.

My two challenges — the big space & the small budget.

I touched on this above, but here I will go a little deeper. This is a big nursery. We have a four bedroom house, one room made the most sense for our master so that one was out. There is another bedroom that is smaller than the rest but still a good size. HOWEVER, this room…. this room with the window nook, being closest to the nursery, the closet organizer, it was meant for our babies. Filling the big room for the smallest person it is!

Ideally, we will have more children & we can put two or so in this room. That is if we want to tackle the task that is room sharing. We shall see. In the mean time, my challenge was to make this big nursery feel warm & cozy, inspiring & home to our baby. In order to make a larger space feel cozy, you can decorate & design in a way that requires a certain budget. That of which we did not have — therefore, I did the very best I could with the resources we had & although there are lots of things I would like to add in the future, it still became a nice home for our baby to call their own. Here are a few things we did or want to do for this room…

Marketplace & thrift store was our go to for filling this space. The light-fixture, chair, rug, mirror, lamp & some decor were found used & I truly couldn’t find better options any other way. I will always preach buying used because — the satisfaction of the treasure hunt & the stewardship saving the landfills.
Fill the walls. Although there is so much floor to fill, that tends to be cramped & frankly, pictures frames usually don’t cost as much as furniture. We went with a gallery wall (that we are still adding to) to create busy-ness. Now to add onto that, I think there is a fine line between busy-ness & overwhelm. I prefer gallery walls that are stacked “clean” meaning the space between frames are balanced. Also paying attention to the tones. Doing a vintage style room, I chose to find thrifted frames that had photos I liked or order some off Etsy that are cohesive. The moody & dusty tones in our frames all go together nicely to fill the space & not be too distracting.
Layering & texture. This is something that I would like to incorporate more through out time. Add texture where you can — walls with accents or window treatments, floors with rugs, furniture with blankets & pillows. I would love to add a large neutral rug to fill the room better & incorporate the smaller rugs I have now to layer on top. This creates “rooms in the room”. It separates the reading nook from the sleeping quarters, etc. Another thing I plan to add is more texture to the walls, specifically the wall of the crib. There is this old english style stone paneling that I want to add to create that cozy, cottage feel. The tones in it will create more warmth & the 3D effect will add dimension. another dream would be WALLPAPER! For now, hanging some handmade blankets we were gifted on an according peg rail will do the trick! One of the simplest & I think sweetest ways to fill a wall in a nursery, though, is with books. We built these Ikea-look-alike shelves ourselves to fit the space better, but I think Amazon has something like it that is smaller. Whether a bookshelf or floating shelves, get those books up on a wall to add color, interest & purpose. I chat more about purposeful decorating later.

Decorating with purpose & intention.

Hosting a nursery theme was something I wasn’t sure about. Did I want this look to fit a box? Not really. At the same time, I am all about the meaning behind everything. Anything can be sentimental. We went with a theme that is not super “theme-y”. It’s basically our property. The vintage, cottage style (will be more cottage style in the future when we can incorporate a few more elements that are pricier) is a reflection of our 1890 victorian home. The mushrooms, earthy tones, plants, critters, etc. mirrors our wondrous backyard. Although we live in walking distance to our downtown, we are still on half an acre with our backyard touching an un-develope-able 7+ acres. The deer, squirrels, birds & groundhogs pay us lovely visits year round. It is an adventure out there, one I imagine my little ones running around in with their curious imaginations.

With this theme in mind, I started my thrifted hunt as soon as those two lines showed up. Old frames, vintage trinkets, anything mushroom related I would add to our collection. It truly came together so perfectly for me. The mirror from marketplace, the “vintage” look posters from a local antique shop (although I did find them on amazon, too!), & then a few new purchases from Joanns because I couldn’t resist. It felt so good creating a space with character for our little one, cohesiveness for our home & intention using purposeful decor. Here are some of my favorite pieces of “purposeful decor”…

Plants, plants, plants. The fiddle may no longer be with us as I write this post, however I plan on perfecting the art of care taking for our green neighbors & filling every corner of our home. I have seen the benefits of quality air using plants especially with our rusty, dusty four walls.
Using gifts. For instance, the handmade blankets we received brings tears to my eyes. Countless hours were poured into these all with our baby in mind. The best gifts. Being able to put them on display (some of them because we truly got so many) was a fun addition, but also helped add texture to our walls. Some other gifts we got that we are technically using as decor include the books, baskets, stuffed animals & clothes.
Limit one use items. By this I mean, limit your decor that is just to look at. Use jars that can hold boys, paci’s, or products. Trays for lotions & oils. Plants (like above) because they also have benefits. Blankets like how we hung ours but can also be quickly grabbed. Things we have that are just to look at right now is really just the wall art, although I could argue that this can be educational & the wooden mushrooms. The most fun addition we included would be the kraft roll. Right now it’s used for monthly milestones, Bible verses & notes to our boy, but in the future I imagine him using it for doodling & boosting his own creativity.

This room has been a dream for years, just waiting to be put into reality. What we wanted this space to look like has changed many times over the years, even more recently just with crunching down on the budget. Sure, we may add things here & there to finish this space up or keep it ever changing as our kids do, but for now I sit in here with the biggest smile on my face knowing that our babies will be sleeping & growing in a room that was so thought out for them. A room that has been prayed in, cried in, celebrated in, all for the precious lives of all our babies.