Bedroom for Baby, birds, and a budget

So the little person's room is complete (for some reason I don't like the word nursery). Though the more time I've spent with some low income couples and the more I've become aware of how developmentally behind new babies are, it seems a little strange to give a new baby their whole own room. But we've got the space- and frankly we probably had more energy for changing it all up than we would in 6 or 9 months. So we might as well just do it.

A lot of projects like this involve painting the room. But we rent, so in our agreement we said that anything we painted we would have to paint back to the original color. Well that didn't seem so fun. So I kind of decided that orange could look okay with the grey/blue shade of the walls. Ultimately, I am now glad we couldn't paint. I think the subtle wall color allowed for bold accents to be super fun!

So anyway, I LOVE how our little person's room turned out! I loved putting so much creative energy into it and really loved seeing it turn into a good office space to an adorable little kids room. So here's my wrap up on the little person's room. With how much we spent (which now that it's all added up feels like a lot- but probably isn't)




Crib

So in March (wow that was a long time ago) Sean and I spotted a cute wooden dresser on craigslist for $20. We had to rent a van to go get it. Well, since we already had the van rented we decided to see if there was any other furniture we needed. So we got this used Ikea crib and mattress for $50.






Here's the dresser. We purchased primer, brushes and 2 cans of paint at Fred Meyer for the dresser. It turned out looking pretty sharp. At some point we realized we needed some sort of bookshelf so we took 3 wooden boxes (see the box on top of the dresser) that I had bought in graduate school and hadn't really found their rightful place in our house yet. We cleaned out the potato crud from the bottom (for awhile this fall they had held our produce) and painted those.

The hangy thing, with help from one of those expanding bolts, we got at Ikea for $4.99 and it has swaddling blankets, cloth diaper covers, socks hats, and crib sheets.





Okay, so re-looking at the first picture from this blog you see. Orange curtains from Ikea. These were kind of pricey for $30. When you consider that the furniture we got was not much more than that- that is a hunk of dough from some fabric. We also had to buy the curtain rod and holder which was all of $2.00. Anyway, you can see the box under the windowsill. This box has been by Sean's bedside for as long as he can remember. It's currently a small little toybox, but we wanted to use it in our little person's room.

The rocking chair is awesome! And was a super generous gift from a super generous (but anonymous) donor. Thank you, Thank you Thank you! The lamp and shade was a goodwill lamp for $5.00 with a little bit of paint it's perfect. There is also a bird on the inside of the lampshade that you can only see when the light is on!


The Art







Okay, so here's a wrap up on the art in the room. I took the bird mobile that I made months ago and ended up taking the birdies off the stick. It wasn't balanced right and I had these cool plastic branch things. So hanging above the rocking chair are my orange birdies on limbs. They look so alive I can almost hear them chirping.

The black doofy looking birds were a set I bought on etsy at apx. $30. I love these silly looking birds. I bought a couple individual ones and then a group of them sitting on a wire. When I went to put the ones on a wire on the wall it didn't stick right. I had to take them all off. Separate them and then I put them all over the room. There is one that shows up when the lamp is on, there's on on the corner of the door on and and on. They are sort of hidden about.

The primary art in the room though is the bird paintings. I took pieces of cardboard, painted them orange, and then sketched different silly looking birds on them and painted them in. They turned out looking pretty cool.

From the thank you cards we had all these punched out birds. I put them on the window with some double sided tape.



Financial Wrap up

So here is our expense list. I think it is pretty honest and accurate. I am actually surprised we spent close to $400. But all in all, it's not much to furnish a room with all the little details. Good thing we spread that much $ out over the past 9 months too. Otherwise it would feel like a kicker.
Costs:

What Where How Much?

Ikea Vitten Rug Craigslist $60
Dresser Craigslist $20
Ikea Crib & Mattress Craigslist $50
Rental Van Budget $60
Hanging Mesh shelf Ikea $5
Orange Curtians Ikea $30
Curtain Hardware Ikea $2
Lamp & Lampshade Goodwill $5
Paint,Primer, brushes Fred Meyer $40
Stuffed animals Ikea $15
1 Tube of white paint UW bookstore $2
Rug Pad Overstock.com $50
Double sided Tape Michael's $3
Bolts Lowes $2
Bird Decals Etsy.com $25
Outlet covers Ikea $1
Sewing kit Fred Meyer $3

Total cost: $373


Now, the reality of all of this is that we could not have managed to stock this room or make it actually ready without people who have given us gifts. I mean, a dresser is only useful if you have a changing pad and some clothes. The bookshelves are useless without books, the crib is still incomplete if we don't have a crib sheet or a swaddling blanket to put the person in. So the reality is that we are blessed so much by my thrifty creativity but by a super generous community.