Readying the Nursery

Over the past few months David and I have enjoyed completing weekend projects to get our nursery ready for our expectant son. Before getting pregnant we used the second bedroom of our town home as our study for days when we work from home or want to game and as storage for my coats and our bookshelf. Every once in a while we were lucky to have guests stay with us and could get out the air mattress for them in the room. We have enjoyed having a dedicated computer space, so we decided to make some upgrades to the room to optimize the space so that we could keep the desk and bookshelf, but still feel our son had the things he needed in his room.

 Here is a list of some of our project endeavors:

• New Closet - We spent two Saturdays with my dad installing a white closet with what we hope to be plenty of shelving and drawers. We used Home Depot's closet planning tool on their website and now keep the accordion closet doors in our garage. 
• Additional Light Fixture - The room has always been a little dark with the lone fish light fixture the owners before us installed in the room, especially at evening time during the Seattle winter. Mr. D and I picked out a light fixture and asked my dad for help again to install it. Mr. D got to crawl around in our attic and they worked together to position the light and get it installed "just right". 
• Purchasing second-hand items - When we first got pregnant we asked a couple we are close with for their advice on what items they felt we would need in the first few months of having a baby. From our conversations we made a list of items we wanted and have been scouring FB Marketplace over the past months for local second-hand deals. Some of our buys included our crib, infant swing, and glider. 
• New Curtains - We purchased blackout curtains and borrowed a friend's steamer to take out the wrinkles. Mr. D did most the steaming work on his own. 
• Baby-proof decor - It took me some time to decide if and how I wanted to add decor to our son's room. I ended up printing animal photos at Costco from cheap Etsy prints and placed them in Ikea frames. People are generally advised not to hang anything above the crib since the baby might eventually knock it down, so we replaced the glass in the frames with acrylic. Michael's wanted to charge us more than $100 for the three acrylic frames (no way!), but we purchased the acrylic sheet at Lowe's and they cut it for free for about $30. Here are a couple additional photos of our nursery: