Preparing for baby #2: nursery ideas

Have I mentioned we live in a small house? It’s one of those 1940s one-and-a-half story houses, where the top story is one long bedroom with slanted walls on either side. On main floor we have a small kitchen, a living room/dining room combo, a bathroom (the only one), a decent sized bedroom, a teeny bedroom/office, and a three-season porch. The basement is mostly finished.

We bought the house nine years ago, and I don’t think I thought about kids once when we toured and made our choice. My twenty-four-year-old self was a bit short-sighted.

So here we are figuring out nursery idea options for fitting in a second baby. I thought about having her room up with us but I really want to be on the same level as the bathroom (when I was up at night with Bee I always needed water and a bathroom trip before going back to sleep). That means the baby and I need to be on the main floor, at least for the beginning. So we’ve decided to turn our guest room into a nursery/guest room combo.

My plan is to strip anything out the current guest room that can go elsewhere. A bookshelf and my sewing table will find a new home in our basement or upstairs bedroom. We’ll use a bassinet for the first few months (to make it easier to have the baby bedside, and to help bridge the gap until Bee is done with her crib). I’m not sure what we’re going to do for a chair (ideas, anyone?) and I’m going to experiment with the idea of giving the queen-sized bed a daybed feel (up against the wall, with a frame and pillows).

I still love the colors in Bee’s nursery (lots of grays, whites, and neutrals, with small pops of color) and since they and the kids be united some day in the same room, I’m going to stick to the same color palette, roughly.

Here’s a little board of Beatrice’s nursery:

IKEA Hemnes / IKEA Gulliver / Dwell Studio Changing Pad Cover / Skip Hop ‘Night & Day Discovery’ Toy / Star Wars poster / Jellycat ‘Cordy Roy Lion’ Stuffed Animal

I included her favorite books for a little color, and because they’re always strewn across the floor. Because it’s such a small room (with three doors! one closet, one to the porch, and one main door) it’s hard to photograph. The rug is Urban Outfitters (like the ones pictured below) and cleans up in the washer like a dream–a prerequisite for any kid room rug in my book.

I’ve started pinning some nursery ideas of things that I like:

I love orange for gender unknown babies:

And yellow and gray are so pretty together:

And then there are these pretty things:

I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, including painting the room (gray again! Probably slightly darker that Bee’s, just for variety). We don’t have much money to spend but fortunately the things I love best — rugs, changing pad covers, sheets — are pretty inexpensive. Since we don’t know the gender yet I may wait on a few things, queuing them up for a quick online order once the baby arrives, because I know I won’t be running around town shopping then!

If you have nursery ideas or advice, I’d love to hear it!