I have been looking forward to making this post for a while! I'm sure I'll be posting more about our little home as things come together, but I'm excited to share the beginning phases of our house face-lift!
After we announced that we were pregnant, one of the first things that people said to us was "so you're moving, right?" Tom and I live in a very quirky, lovely, 1 bedroom basement suite. We have been in the same place since moving to Edmonton in 2013. We absolutely love it here. We love the location (so central and close to everything we need - it's 12 minutes to Tom's work and 12 minutes to my work); we love the tree lined neighbourhood, our back yard, our garden, our fire pit, our awesome landlords and neighbours, and financially, this place has allowed us to move forward with paying off debts and to be in a good place. We couldn't feel more blessed, and we truly have fallen in love with our little basement suite that we are so thrilled to call home. There was no way we wanted to leave, but we knew that we would need to be creative if we were to fit a baby down here!
Nursery tidbits: Since our space is so small, we opted to go for a mini crib. I researched quite a lot of different brands, and for me it came down to the Alma Bloom Mini Crib & the Stokke Sleepi Crib.
Okay, so this crib FASCINATED ME. I thought it was so economical that you could have a bassinet that turns into a crib that turns into a toddler bed. I loved that this crib literally grows with your child. I was obviously really interested in getting the white one (to fit my theme). As we looked into the Stokke crib, we were disheartened by the price. The crib itself is close to $1000, then the mattress is a couple extra hundred dollars, then the fitted sheet is almost a $100, then the extension pieces are a couple hundred dollars. After you add up all the expenses of this crib, it equals close to $2000. I just couldn't justify that in our budget. Then, if we have a second baby, we would have to go buy a new crib because our first baby would be occupying the original one. Then if I bought 2 Stokke sleep systems, the crib costs for 2 kids would be around $4000. That just seemed crazy to me. We know we could search for used cribs, but used cribs were selling anywhere from $700-$1000. As much as I LOVE the design, I couldn't fork out the cash for this crib.
The changes we decided to make:
#1. Where were we going to put baby? Our closet is located in our ridiculously huge bathroom, so I thought why not make our own closet in our bedroom, empty the bathroom closet, and make a closet nursery for baby? That's exactly what we did!!!
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| The beginning stages of our closet nursery!!! This is the closet that we were originally using for our clothes. We took off the closet doors, created our own closet in our bedroom, and thought our bathroom is big enough, so we'll be creative with the space we have and USE IT! The closet nursery literally fits together PERFECTLY. We couldn't be more excited. I'm currently on the hunt for a new area rug (I'm going for the white theme with bright pops of color for a fresh look in our house. If you have any tips of where to get a cute area rug that would match the theme for a good price, let me know!) |
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| We purchased this closet organizer off of Amazon. We love it because we are renting, and these are free standing units so you don't have to install anything into the wall (though we might install stabilizers hooks once baby is crawling and standing). You just set them up. Tom and I gained SO much extra closet space this way. I really think they worked out perfectly. We love it! The quality of the stand is really great, in my opinion, and very sturdy. If you are interested in purchasing some for your own home, you can find them here: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B001339YQO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It is my hope to jazz these up by getting cute baskets for the top to store all our junk in. One thing at a time. We'll get there eventually! |
Nursery tidbits: Since our space is so small, we opted to go for a mini crib. I researched quite a lot of different brands, and for me it came down to the Alma Bloom Mini Crib & the Stokke Sleepi Crib.
The Alma Bloom Mini Crib:
We loved this option because of its modern and sleek design. It's compact, and when you're not using it, it folds up so small so it's super easy to store. It also has two adjustable mattress heights, so as baby gets bigger, you can lower the mattress so they can't get out of the crib. ;) I've read that this lowered crib is good for babies 12-24 months. It all depends on how long your baby gets. We also love that it comes on wheels so it's super portable and you can wheel baby with you around the house!!
The Stokke Sleepi Crib:
Okay, so this crib FASCINATED ME. I thought it was so economical that you could have a bassinet that turns into a crib that turns into a toddler bed. I loved that this crib literally grows with your child. I was obviously really interested in getting the white one (to fit my theme). As we looked into the Stokke crib, we were disheartened by the price. The crib itself is close to $1000, then the mattress is a couple extra hundred dollars, then the fitted sheet is almost a $100, then the extension pieces are a couple hundred dollars. After you add up all the expenses of this crib, it equals close to $2000. I just couldn't justify that in our budget. Then, if we have a second baby, we would have to go buy a new crib because our first baby would be occupying the original one. Then if I bought 2 Stokke sleep systems, the crib costs for 2 kids would be around $4000. That just seemed crazy to me. We know we could search for used cribs, but used cribs were selling anywhere from $700-$1000. As much as I LOVE the design, I couldn't fork out the cash for this crib.
The Winner: Alma Bloom Mini.
We went with the Alma Bloom mini because it was much less expensive, we can re-use it if future children come our way, it's easy to store, and because the rectangle shape of this crib just fit our space perfectly in our closet nursery. If you purchase the Alma Bloom Mini Crib, Mattress, and Sheets brand new, you're looking at a cost of about $750 for everything (the crib, the mattress, fitted sheets). We purchased the crib used from a lovely couple whose baby had recently outgrown the crib, and we saved $300 on the whole set.
And I mean seriously. It fits PERFECTLY into our closet!!!
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| We got our darling rocking chair off of Kijiji and I just adore it! |
#2: Creating space in our bedroom. For the first few months, we want to keep baby in our bedroom, so we wanted to create space in our bedroom to fit the crib beside our bed.
Before:
After:
I thought to myself: We have a lot of VERTICAL space. How can we use it? We had 2 dressers in our bedroom previously, and a storage unit. To clear up wall space, we decided to sell both dressers, and replace those dressers with a storage bed! We had this bed custom made for us by a friend named Levi Marks. He did a great job, and we would highly recommend him for custom made furniture. He gave us a great price and finished our bed way faster then we expected! I had also done a lot of research about storage beds and lots of the storage beds you can buy from the store (Ikea, Pottery Barn, etc) have really shallow drawers. I researched my own blueprints, and we found one by Ana White that had deep drawers. Tom and I are not handy people in the slightest (Don't tell Tom ;) ), but if you are good with tools and are interested in one of these beds for yourself, you can find the plan here:
or you can hire Levi to make one for you!
This bed has given us lots of storage and freed up space in our room so we can easily have baby sleep beside us for the first little while!
My next goal for the bedroom: find colourful and beautiful new pillows to add that punch of color into our bedroom! Also, to find new wall decor. I'm thinking maybe a Hawaii beach theme... blue waters, pink flowers... I can't seem to get away from shades of blue and pink. Some of my inspiration for home decor:
Tom has been so patient with all of my plans. He's actually interested in talking about it and suggesting things on his own. The only thing where he put his foot down was when Levi had agreed to build our new bed, so I wanted to put our old, black bed frame on Kijiji right away. He was like "no way I'm sleeping on the floor any longer than I have to!". In his defence, I wanted to sell the bed frame about a month before the new bed would even be ready ;) [Tom totally typed this paragraph into to blog, hehe].
And lastly! Our new coffee table. We love it! Purchased this from Kijiji as well!
Our Coffee Table Before:
Our Coffee Table After:
