What feels like many, many moons ago, when Frank was just a plum in my tum, I started dreaming about his nursery having found out we were having a boy. Having pinned like a demon, I deduced that my ideal baby boy’s room was not very babyish at all. Instead I wanted a room that he could grow in to; a stylish, fun, eclectic space full of colour and pattern. I planned to share the various stages of progress with you, but here we are nearly six months later and I’m skipping straight to the finished product. Meh- who likes the middle stages anyway?
Shall we have a quick reminder of the room when it was essentially just a bland, beige dumping ground?
But now… Ta-da!
Now, I’m no interior designer and I’m sure I’ll be adding and tweaking as time goes on, but both Paul and I are thrilled with our (mainly my) efforts. Frank’s pretty indifferent but that’s to be expected.
The first big decision after painting the room white was the triangle feature wall. I knew I wanted a feature wall of some kind, and had considered stars, polka dots and just a simple block of colour, but it was triangles that seemed to fit my brief the most. They’re fun, modern, stylish and just a little bit masculine. And being stickers they’ll peel off easily when Frank decides he wants to cover his walls with Arsenal and car posters instead. Sigh.
I ordered the stickers from Etsy, and Paul and I spent an August afternoon applying them. Paul was just going to ‘supervise’ seeing as this bizarre triangle wall was all my idea, but ended up masterminding the insanely complicated pattern, and doing the majority of the labour seeing as I was 8 months pregnant and had a good excuse. The stickers were easy to put on (and take off when we went completely wrong with the pattern), and we probably had the wall done in about 3 hours.
On the opposite side of the room is the changing corner. I went for the ever-popular Hemnes chest of drawers from Ikea, and this houses all of Frank’s clothes. Next to it is a simple and not so attractive Argos storage unit containing his ‘toiletries’: nappies, wipes, creams, cotton wool etc. And yes, that is a portable cd player you see on top. I’ve gone old school.
The multi-coloured string lights are from Cable & Cotton, and are probably my best purchase of the whole room. Frank can’t get enough of them and we’d often take him up to the changing table when he was going through a particularly miserable phase, just to stop the crying. You can’t see it so well but there’s also a black and white mobile hanging in front of the mirror. It was a gift from a friend and the spirals and stripes also have Frank squealing with delight. Never has having your bottom wiped been so much fun!
The final ‘zone’ is the reading wall. Once again, the picture shelves are an Ikea favourite (now discontinued), and the bear print is Not On The High Street. The white bench was part of an Ikea dining set and we keep it for when we have more guests than chairs, so to make a bit of a feature of it I sourced some colourful storage boxes for underneath which are currently full of toys, books and, erm, more baby wipes.
What else? I agonised over what rug to go for and ended up with two; a grey sheepskin rug for under the changing table and a pale blue one (featuring more triangles) for the middle of the floor. (I can’t remember for the life of me where it’s from, apologies.) And in terms of artwork I tracked down the Be Happy My Baby print having seen it on a Pinterest image, and both the Lion print and the Amazing Things Will Happen print were gifts from lovely friends.
It is genuinely a really happy, fun room to be in, and no matter how miserable I am when I’m having to change or feed Frank in the middle of the night, I always feel calm and content sitting in there with nothing but the fairy lights on. I am slightly nervous about him being overstimulated when he starts sleeping in there as there is lots to look at… but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
You like??
Sama x
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