One Room Challenge: Nursery Design Plan

Welcome! If you’re finding me through the One Room Challenge, thanks for visiting! I’m an interior designer living in Alexandria, Virginia and my husband and I have spent the last two years slowly fixing up our house not far from George Washington’s Mount Vernon. I’m currently pregnant with our first child and using this spring’s One Room Challenge as an opportunity to finish the nursery.

Last week I shared some before photos some inspiration for the nursery, and today I’m sharing the design plan that I’ve been using to help guide my purchases for the space.

Over the weekend designer Alison Giese posted a quote on instagram by David Hicks who said, “The best rooms have something to say about the people who live in them.” I couldn’t agree more, and it got me thinking about that philosophy in the context of designing a nursery. Although I’m designing this space for our family to enjoy together, I’m also I’m designing a space that says something about someone I haven’t even met yet. My design says both a lot about our family, but also who I want this child to be, how I hope he feels in the space, and the things I hope are important to him as he grows up.

As I mentioned in my post last week, I knew even before I was pregnant that I wanted to paint the room a cozy dark green and I wanted it to be loosely dog-themed. We have two hounds, one of whom is a tri-color treeing walker hound who looks like the foxhounds you see in antique paintings. I initially envisioned the color palette loosely based on one of those paintings, and as I sourced different items the design plan kind of evolved from there.

While I’m not currently planning to include any of the bright reds, I do see the space having plenty of warm caramel and brass tones to play off of the blues and greens.

After sampling a bunch of green options in the space, I decided on Isle of Pines by Sherwin Williams. It was dark but not too dark, and was slightly warmer and more saturated than a few of the other options I tested. In terms of furnishings, I am trying to include pieces in the space that we can use over time and that are relatively gender neutral so that this room could eventually become a second child’s nursery.

My parents generously purchased the Crate & Barrel Jenny Lind crib that I’ve been eyeing for a while, a piece that has classic lines and will work for a boy or girl in the future. I opted not to go with a crib that would convert into a headboard because I suspect my tastes will have changed by that point and I won’t want to feel locked into the bed. Plus, we’ll (hopefully) be using this crib for a second child when the first is old enough to sleep in a big boy bed.

We’ve been using my grandfather’s old pine dresser in this bedroom since we moved in, and we’re opting to keep it in the space because it fits it well and I like the wood tone and patina in the room. We plan to use it as the changing table as well and since it’s on the slightly taller side I think it will actually make changing diapers a little easier on our backs.

Because the room is small, sourcing a rocker/glider was somewhat challenging. I’ve also become very picky about upholstery fabrics in our house and have pretty much stopped using anything with much of an open weave after five years with two big, shedding dogs, so that eliminated a lot of options from places like Buy Buy Baby and Wayfair. Kyle is also pretty tall, so I we needed something that has a tall enough back but isn’t too deep to fit in the space. We ultimately decided on a leather convertible wing-back rocking chair from Pottery Barn Kids, which Kyle’s parents generously bought for us. Once we’re done with the chair in the nursery we can take the rocker rails off and put stationary feet on, allowing us to use the chair somewhere else in the house.

The room has hardwood so I ordered a vintage wool rug from Etsy. As I posted in my instastories a few weeks ago, we are 100% in on vintage wool rugs because they vacuum up so easily and the vintage wear is forgiving. Both windows are a little challenging because the frames hit directly against adjacent walls, so I ordered cordless woven bamboo blackout shades instead of curtains. I really like the texture they add to the room and they will grow well with the space. To soften the look of the shades and add more pattern to the room, I plan to DIY valances out of an adorable woodland toile from Calico that gives a nod to the trees outside the windows.

I have a loose plan for lighting and accessories, but I’ll honestly end up layering most of it in as I find it over the next month. I’m particularly excited for the artwork we’ve already purchased–two custom water color portraits of our dogs that I ordered on Etsy! I’m having them framed by Framebridge and haven’t quite determined where we’ll hang them in the room yet. I also purchased a perfect mobile to play up our dog “theme” and help build our color scheme.

So that’s the plan! Painting is nearly done and we’re hoping to get the crib put together this weekend. It’s so exciting to see the room come together and makes everything feel more real. I’ll be spending plenty of time this weekend working in the space. Follow me on instagram to get real-time updates as well as tips and tricks and I’m sharing along the way!

And make sure that you visit the One Room Challenge guest blog and check out some of the gorgeous spaces that people are working on for the next month! Every time I look through the different spaces I’m insanely impressed by what people are able to accomplish in their homes!

One Room Challenge: Nursery Before + Inspiration

Back in March I posted on Instagram that we’re expecting a baby boy in July! Which, among other exciting things, means I get to design my very first nursery. If you’ve been following my instastories you’ve already seen some of my plans for the space. When I realized last week that the timeline for the Spring 2020 One Room Challenge had been pushed back it seemed like a perfect opportunity to participate again so I would document the process and give myself a hard deadline for completion (my last blog post was actually the Spring 2019 ORC Reveal). I’m due July 30 and I’m starting to feel the third trimester slow-down, so making sure this project is done by the June 25 ORC reveal is just the kind of motivation I need right now. Truthfully this project could not have come at a better time and I am very thankful […]

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One Room Challenge Week 6: Sun Porch Reveal

One thing that drew me to our current house, besides the amazing lot, was that the house itself is just kind of, well…quirky. It sounds cheesy, but its personality spoke to me. The spaces felt interesting, even without furniture, clad with dated wallpaper and floors that had seen better days. The bulk of the work we’ve done on the house in the last year has been an editing process–a tweaking and streamlining of what already exists–in an effort to freshen and modernize the space without taking away the inherent character of it. The sun porch was one of those spaces that I knew had so much potential with a few tweaks. Before we officially moved in, we had a few take-out meals just sitting on the steps of the porch, looking out at this dream lot we had just purchased and soaking in the sun. I envisioned eating out there […]

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One Room Challenge Week 5: Tile in the Sun Porch

Today is my last check-in for the One Room Challengebefore the big reveal next week, and I’m definitely going be busy trying to get as much done as possible! I missed a Week 4 update last week for our Sun Porch renovation progress, but that’s in part because there wasn’t much progress at all. To be honest, all the painting is taking FOREVER. Painting the panels black required two coats of primer and three coats of black paint, plus touch-up in some spots. Then the mullions took (are taking) much longer than I anticipated. I’ve also been in the process of painting a cabinet and 5 Windsor chairs, which is brutally tedious. The biggest news and transformation for this week is the floor. We finally got tile installed and I am in LOVE! I knew that I wanted a slate or slate-look porcelain tile because I love the look of […]

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One Room Challenge: Week 3

This weekend I continued to plug away on our sun porch renovation as part of the One Room Challenge. It may not look like much progress but it felt like I spent the whole weekend painting the panels and window trim black! Last week I prepped for paint by sanding the wood paneling and pine window trim. Saturday morning I started to tackle the paint. I used two coats of grey primer and at least three coats of black paint on each panel, with a little touch-up Monday and Tuesday when I had good afternoon light to see the spots that I missed. I still intend to paint the window panes and put them back on so that we get the feel of black steel windows. That’s on my list for this weekend. In addition to painting, I started to round up some of my new purchases for the room. […]

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One Room Challenge Week 2: Plans and (Little) Progress

My participation in the One Room Challenge is off to a slow start but for good reason! I spent the last couple weeks preparing to host my mom’s surprise 60th birthday party at our house and I couldn’t exactly turn the room upside down. The party went well and I’ve hit the ground running this week by prepping the space for paint and solidifying my furnishing plans. Paint prep involved removing the snap-in mullions from the windows along with the existing window treatments. I can’t believe how much taller the windows look without the shades cutting them off at the top! I also sanded all of the wood paneling and the pine window frames/sills so that the primer adheres well to those surfaces. This weekend I’ll finally be painting those areas black to simulate the look of steel windows. A few weeks ago we also sold the outdoor sectional that […]

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One Room Challenge: Sun Porch Before + Plan

My first One Room Challenge! I’ve toyed with the idea of participating for a while now and have been in need of some motivation to get some projects done around the house. The One Room Challenge is a twice-annual event that encourages designers and guest participants to finish a room in 6 weeks, blogging about the progress weekly, so I’ve decided to challenge myself and attempt to get a project finished around here. The space I’m tackling is one of my favorite in our new house. Deemed the “Sun Porch”, the room is a formerly open porch that was enclosed in the 1990s by the previous owners. It’s accessible through two sets of French doors from our living room and doesn’t have any AC or heat. The large picture windows overlook our backyard and the river (in winter and spring) and it’s a perfect spot to enjoy a sunset in […]

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Our “New” House

Another year in between posts and I’m back again to share the belated news of our “new” home purchase! I figured it was high-time to make a formal introduction to the home and fill you in on what prompted the move before I dive into blog posts about the house itself. Sometimes when you write something down and send it out into the universe, things start moving in ways you never anticipated. In my March 2018 post I walked through our various options for improving our little rambler house that we bought in 2017. I discussed doing nothing and saving our money, renovating within the existing footprint of our house, and putting a master bedroom addition on the house. The last line of the post read: “In the meantime, I’ll continue monitoring the local real estate market for a manageable fixer upper with views of the Potomac in a decent […]

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Deciding How Far to Take Our House Renovation

Now that we’ve lived in our house for almost a year, we’re seriously thinking about how we want to renovate this house (if at all). Our neighborhood is hot–though not quite as hot as our previous one–and this strong spring market suggests that if we’re smart about renovating this house, we could literally sell it immediately and make a profit. I’m finding THAT is my favorite kind of renovation. The thing we’re struggling with right now is just how far to take that renovation. We pretty much have three options: Don’t renovate. Make cosmetic updates like painting cabinets and updating the bathroom. Pay off my student loans. Sit here and save, and jump ship when we find our “dream” house. Add a second bathroom within the existing footprint of the house. Make cosmetic updates so this house looks totally renovated. Bulldoze our 1950s carport and connected storage/laundry/mudroom and add a […]

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Updating for Resale: Kitchen Finishes

On Monday I detailed our experience selling our first house and the improvements we made to get maximum value out of our house in a short period of time. I touched on the finishes briefly and today I’m including a list of sources for the updates we made to our kitchen. As a reminder, here’s what the kitchen looked like when we bought the house. The cabinets were solid but looked dated, the appliances worked but were old, the countertops never looked clean, and we didn’t have a dishwasher or room for a microwave off the counter. Here’s what the kitchen looked like when we sold it: We removed a cabinet and added a dishwasher, replaced all our appliances with new stainless steel appliances, and tiled the kitchen floor. I added molding to the soffits and painted the cabinets and soffits white to make them feel taller and more interesting. […]

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