A Room for a Bigger Boy

Well guys, I think it's time to admit it. B is growing up. For reals. He's gone from our tiny, squishy newborn to running jumping blur of a toddler. Not to mention the fact he'll be a big brother before we know it! So we think it's time to upgrade to a big boy room. We converted his crib to a toddler bed a couple months ago (and want to get him out of it before Baby #2 moves in and needs the crib) and has done great with it, so he should be good to go with a twin bed! And of course switching out the bed leads to a whole room makeover. :) But let's start at the beginning.

We started with a nice light, neutral nursery since B's gender was a surprise (baby #2 will be a surprise as well). We've done a few small things since then to try to make things more BOY, but I think the time has come for a new, more boyish, more grown-up kind of color scheme. Something that can work for him now, but that he can also grow into. I came across this color card at Lowe's and I think it might be just the thing for a big boy room. And no, there is nothing wrong with using pre-selected color cards. :)

We don't necessarily want to repaint the walls since the neutrals are so easy to work with (and we might be adding a baby girl at some point!) so we're planning to use the colors on things like furniture, curtains and bedding. So there will definitely be some furniture painting involved, and maybe a little sewing too...

Moving up to a twin bed is going to affect the layout a bit too. Here's the current room:

The big chair will definitely have to go. It just can't fit with the new bed! But I'm not worried about it since the bed will still give a place for us grown ups to sit down, and even lay with B to read books before bed! Yay! With that gone, I'm thinking of moving the dresser and toy shelves over to the left wall and adding a small table to the other corner. Which should still leave plenty of room to play.

Or maybe keeping the dresser in the bottom corner and moving the toy shelf to the left wall with the small table. I'll probably just have to slide things around a little and see what I like.

We're really excited about the bed (a hand-me-down gift from B's Papa & Grandma!). It's the fun loft-type bed from Ikea (called the Kura bed) and even has the canopy tent thingy. While he's still small we'll have it upside-down like the pic below so he's near the ground, but once he's bigger we can flip it over and sleep up on the loft with space for toys and playing underneath (or a second mattress for baby #2). We'll probably flip the panels around so the white side shows instead of the blue.

 I think the dresser will work really well with the new colors, so it gets to stay in yellow stripey glory.

The other big piece of furniture in the room is the bookcase we use for toys.Which will definitely need painted. It's still painted black from when it was in the office at our old house (before I really found my style - I don't have any black furniture anymore!) and has always stuck out like a sore thumb in the nursery. A room makeover is just the thing to finally motivate me to paint it! The pic on the right is the only one I have of it in action (and the crib converted to a toddler bed). Not so pretty. And - spoiler alert - the pic on the left is the only other one I have because I drug it out to the patio to paint it last week! But we'll get to that later.

I'm hoping we can use this beautiful weather to go ahead and tackle the tiny table and chairs too. We'll be building them with plans by Ana White. And not painting them pink.

 table plans here - chair plans here

A big part of the color will probably come from the bedding. My top goal would be to make a quilt (a really, really simple quilt) that would pull in all the colors with fun boyish prints. But I've started shopping around a bit and my word that seems like an expensive endeavor. Hopefully I can find enough deals and coupons to pull it off, but if not the back up plan is this $20 duvet cover from Ikea (plus the $7 duvet and a couple sets of $13 sheets).

 

Also from Ikea, I bought a few a these spice racks a few months ago to use as book shelves and haven't done it yet. I'm thinking for a big boy bed I'll paint them white and hang them around his bed for easy bedtime reading.

Those are the only somewhat definite plans. I'm also trying to think of ways to add more/better storage for toys and such but haven't come up with anything solid yet. I'm toying with something like Ana White's Stackable Toy Boxes or Classic Toy Box, but I'm honestly not sure we'd have room for anything like that. We may just need to cut back on the toys. I don't know.

And as usual, I'm sure these plans will change many, many times before anything is finished. But it's okay. The dreaming and planning and rearranging is half the fun! What room are you guys hoping to tackle this spring???