One Room Challenge: a baby boy nursery

This year I’ve decided to participate in the One Room Challenge for the first time. If you haven’t heard of the ORC, it’s a large online event where bloggers participate in making over one room of their home in the space of 5 weeks. Room makeovers are my very favourite thing ever – there’s nothing like seeing a whole space completely transformed in a short space of time!

At first I couldn’t decide which room to choose for this challenge. In the end I decided to go with my son’s nursery. Now… it’s been partially done for a while (baby boy is six months old now!! What?!) – but I’ve yet to share a single image of this space with you all, and goodness knows I could do with the push to get it completely finished. I was so busy working on a client’s home before I gave birth that everything else got put on the back burner. I got the nursery cleared out and habitable, and that was about it. Then number four arrived, and well… that was the end of sleep and spare time for a while. The past few months have been crazy-busy to say the least.

So rather than launch in on a whole new project, I’m going to use this opportunity to finally get this room wrapped up.

Here’s a look at what the room was like before:

Attractive, right? It was my husband’s music room, so we are talking a LOT of bulky music gear – speakers, sound desk, computer, music stands, piles of leads, keyboards, guitars, other random instruments, and of course, a Queen mattress leaning up against the wall, because this room also doubled as our guest room. #classy

The problem

Our first task was to figure out what the heck to do with all the music gear so we could clear out the room.

We are currently living in a small four-bedroom home, and with four kids now, we feel like we’re bursting at the seams. Our two older boys already share a room, and my 4-year-old daughter’s room also doubles as the playroom since this is a one living-area house. (Boy, do I miss the playroom from our last home!) … so all the toy storage has to fit in her bedroom. My office is in the dining room, and apart from that, there’s not a spare nook or cranny to be found.

The solution

To solve this problem, we ended up enclosing the garage (it used to be partially open to the elements on both sides) and adding a wall of open shelving for my husband’s music gear.

It’s actually turned out pretty well, because now when he has a gig, he can just load his gear straight into the car. He also keeps a guitar under our bed so he can easily grab it out to play it during the week, and his keyboard has moved into the boys’ room so they can use it for their piano practice. It’s a bit crammed in there (all the bedrooms are small) but it’s workable for now. The recording gear has been moved to a studio in town.

We sold the spare mattress, and now when we have visitors we do a kid-shuffle so guests can use one of the kid’s beds. It’s not ideal – we’d love some more space eventually! – but it’s working out fine so far.

A tale of two moodboards

So, with those space logistics out of the way, I got thinking about the room design. I wanted to create a funky, modern vibe for my little boy, using bold graphical patterns. The room itself doesn’t have much going for it, apart from high ceilings. It’s very small and drab, with white walls and brown carpets. It needed a “wow” factor. So, I decided to use wallpaper to create an accent wall behind the cot (or crib, for my U.S. readers).

I was torn between two gorgeous wallpapers, so while I was pregnant, I made a mood-board for each option.

OPTION ONE: Cloud wallpaper

Option One uses Aimee Wild “clouds” wallpaper. The room has a palette of grey and black, freshened up with crisp white and a shot of that gorgeous kelly green.

OPTION TWO: Pine tree wallpaper

The second wallpaper option, Deep in the Forest, contains burnt orange, grey and blue. Too much green would be a bit much in combination with those colours and the busier pattern, so I’ve toned down the colour scheme with solid grey curtains. Apart from that, everything else is the same.

Next week I’ll share which mood board I picked, and why. For now, though, I’m curious to know… which one is your favourite? I wonder if you can guess which one I picked?