My daughter’s nursery is the first and only room in my home that I would consider to be more or less done. Sure, there are some little things here and there that I know I still need to take care of, but let’s just say my daughter’s room is basically the nicest room in my house right now. It’s also one of the more drastic before and afters that I’ve done since when we moved into the house the room had grass green walls, purple trim, and vinyl tile laid on top of asbestos tile. My main inspiration for the design for this room was the paint color Contented from Sherman Williams, which we’d already used in our guest room, and the salmony pink art deco light cover that was already in the room.
The nursery theme was loosely “nature.” I wanted it to be mostly gender-neutral, but with little pops of femininity. I also went into the design for this room with the perspective that I wanted the room to be a place that I would enjoy spending time in, figuring that my baby probably wouldn’t have an opinion on decor for quite some time.
Here is the mood board I created in my planning for this room:
The first step of this renovation involved removing the flooring, which included asbestos abatement. Note that other options you have when dealing with intact asbestos tile are installing carpet or a floating floor over the tile. We chose to remove it, as we just felt better getting it out of there. Plus, we wanted real hardwood floors, which you can’t just install on top of asbestos tiles because the nails will disturb the asbestos. Unfortunately, the abatement company was not able to completely remove all of the adhesive from the wood floor underneath the tiles, so we were unable to have the original floors refinished. Instead, they applied a layer of special paint to the floor to seal in the adhesive, and we had hardwood floors installed on top of that. Honestly, the cost of the asbestos abatement was much more affordable than I thought it would be, in part because we used a referral from a friend of ours who is an architect.
In progress 
Asbestos removed
Next, I painted the room. While it’s our eventual goal to strip and refinish the trim in the whole home, frankly we did not have our act together in time and so I ended up painting the trim. While I’m generally a fan of preserving the original features of the house, I have to say that the off-white painted trim looks beautiful. To paint the trim I first used an orbital sander to give some texture to the glossy paint below, as well as to try to get rid of some of the previous brush strokes and spots where paint had dripped before. Painting the walls, of course, required tons of patching, especially after I started painting the ceiling and the moisture in the paint caused parts of the ceiling plaster to fall off. Is it just me, or does basically every project in an old house take longer and bring up new problems that you didn’t expect?
The furniture and decor is a mix of new and second hand. The crib that I picked out was gifted to us by my husband’s parents. They also gave us the mid-century dresser that doubles as a changing table, an extra piece of furniture they had at their house and no longer needed. The glider I picked up second hand on Craigslist. The seller advertised it as barely used, and aside from a little smudge on the arm, I can confirm that’s probably true. Do you know how expensive those gliders are new? I highly recommend getting a used one as so many people buy one for their nursery and then barely use them. I ended up finding a cheaper rug from Urban Outfitters than the one on my mood board. The shelves are Ikea Kallax, and while I’m not a huge a fan of such a large piece of furniture in the room, they were a practical choice in that we needed storage for toys and books and we had much more vertical than horizontal space.
The artwork on the walls is a mix of vintage, new, and DIY. The oil painting over the crib is one I acquired at a flea market years ago. The baby animals are from Minted with gallery frames from Blick. The botanical prints are pages that had already been pulled out of a book of vintage botanicals and that I bought at an estate sale and framed with Blick frames and mattes. The Blick frames are great because they’re affordable and come in lots of different sizes.
The blinds are from Blinds.com. The DIY blackout curtains include transparent curtains from Kohl’s with blackout fabric that I sewed onto the back at the top. I had not planned to install curtains in this room, but found that the blinds didn’t block out the sunlight sufficiently.
Here’s a before and after:
Before 
After
And a summary of the materials I used:
- Crib: Sprout 4 in 1 convertible crib
- Paint: Sherwin Williams Contented
- Rug: No longer available. Here’s a similar, slightly more expensive one.
- Artwork: Prints and frames
- Ottoman: No longer available on Etsy. Here’s a similar one.
- Curtains: The curtains were a steal at $19.99 a panel, but unfortunately are no longer available. These are similar and available in 108″ length.
- Blinds
- Rope Storage Basket
- Baskets
- Cube storage
