We will still be paying off George’s hospital bills until 2021 (literally) so we’re very grateful that we did not spend crazy amounts on a nursery that will be trashed by the time he is two. For now, it is still the cleanest room in the house, though. I will enjoy that while it lasts.

We kept the gender of our babe a surprise so the existing 80s green wallpaper was the perfect backdrop. Mostly everything except the crib and dresser were pulled from our staging archives and lovingly placed in the nursery. Oftentimes we will pull stuff out of George’s room to stage a house, but he doesn’t seem to notice, haha.

The Dresser.

I wanted something modern and sophisticated but didn’t break the bank. Something that was a West Elm look-a-like at a fraction of the cost. We already had a white crib. I was anxious to buy another out-of-the-box white dresser in case the white coloring didn’t match the crib. Let me be clear, I am NOT someone who likes all matching furniture in a bedroom; however I didn’t want a natural wood dresser as it would not have been as nice of a contrast with the dark green wallpaper. The room was already pretty dark with the green backdrop so I wanted most large pieces of furniture to be light in nature so they would pop.

Back to the white dilemma: it may not seem like a big deal to some, but I was worried about having the two main pieces of furniture be two different tones of white. There’s nothing worse than looking like you were trying to match, but failing in the process.

It was then I determined that I needed to refinish an existing (cheap) dresser in a matching white paint. But what dresser? If you don’t know by now, I HATE refinishing things. The amount of prep work before actually getting to the “finishing” part drives me nuts. I was also eight months pregnant, super lazy, and most importantly didn’t want to be around sanding dust. It was then I stumbled upon an awesome IKEA hack for the Tarva Dresser by Kristina Lynne.

You can read the whole step-by-step process here, but in a nutshell: the Tarva Dresser is raw pine meant to be painted/stained, so you can get straight to the fun part. We brought a piece of the crib to get paint matched at a local Sherwin-Williams. I remember I asked my doctor if it was okay for me to paint while pregnant and he said, “Sure, but wouldn’t you want someone else to do it for you?” haha. While I painted the dresser, Jim cut the legs on an angle to give them a mid-century modern feel and stained them a walnut color. After the pieces dried, we put it all together. We opted for some brass pulls instead of painting the wooden knobs provided. That’s it! Honestly, this was not a headache at all — I don’t think I had one temper tantrum during this project which says a lot considering how impatient I can be, plus the added layer of pregnancy hormones. Oh, and don’t forget to mount this dresser to a wall especially if it will be used in a child’s room (IKEA provides mounting brackets).

What the dresser looked like. You can buy it at IKEA.

The Other Important Pieces.

There are lots of other items in our team green nursery I’d like to make note of:

The quilt on the crib is handmade. We found it in Hawaii on our honeymoon. We knew if we ended up having children we would want it in the nursery. It was so exciting to break this out of storage.

The rug, cow hide, baskets, faux fiddle leaf, driftwood, and lantern were all pulled from our staging archives. The artwork is something I created myself specifically for staging a flip we did in Southern Pines.

We also have a lot of locally sourced items in our nursery:

The leather chair is from The Design Market.

The mud cloth pillows are from The Estate of Things.

The macrame piece was made by MossHound Designs.

We found the card catalog piece and light fixture thrifting locally.

…all to be used for staging at some point.

And finally, the last thing near and dear to us — the hammer and nail art pieces — artist prints by Oliver Jeffers.

Thanks for stopping by our treasured little nursery! We had fun using a lot of things we had collected over the years. If you ever need assistance with putting together a nursery for your sweet little babe filled with meaningful items, don’t hesitate to reach out. We would be happy to help!