Nursery Decorating Ideas Part 1: The Room Dilemma

I love decorating nurseries and kid’s rooms. Visions for this type of room are constantly floating around in my brain. As a result, it is a lot of fun for me, and is by far my favorite type of decorating. Most of you know that I am due with my fourth baby soon, and this is our first time having a baby that I will actually be living in my own home that can be painted instead of living in a rental.

The dilemma:
At first I was so excited that I couldn’t contain myself. But, you may wonder why I haven’t posted about the nursery yet. Sometimes, “real life” decisions are a bit hard and maybe you can relate. We live in a home with 5 bedrooms, and for several months I have been debating where to put the baby.

I have had to push away thoughts like…should I even decorate for the baby? YIKES….could I handle that? Nope. I would not be ok with that. Like I said above, I LOVE decorating nurseries, and this is my nursery. It is my favorite type of room to decorate, and you only live once, right!?!?

The options:
The office?
One of our bedrooms is more like an office because it is located directly off my entryway. So, treating it like a bedroom would be a bit weird in my opinion. It has a closet and could be a bedroom if we needed it, but since the office is my main domain because of A.T.T, combining the baby’s room with the office didn’t seem ideal. Plus, we would have to move the Piano, and we don’t have another spot for it.

Upstairs in his brother’s room?
The two kids rooms are located upstairs. Eventually the baby will join his brother upstairs, but putting an infant’s crib up a flight of stairs sounds like torture to me. I can only imagine climbing the stairs in the middle of the night a million times. So, the option of putting him up there will be delayed a few years.

Master bedroom?
My master bedroom is on the main level. He will be sleeping in my room for a few months as we get adjusted to having a new addition, but after that I want him to have his own space where my other three kids will not wake him up all the time. Plus, I am a firm believer in having a baby learn to sleep in his/her own bed.

Spare/Guest room?
This leaves the spare/guest room which is also located on the main level of our home. Some may argue that this room is the easy answer and that it shouldn’t have been hard for me to come to this conclusion. BUT, in my defense, I live in a location that visitors are frequent. St. George is a vacation destination (which I LOVE). And, I have vowed to always provide a welcoming spot for visitors to come to. I also believe that if you have a bed available, visitors will be more likely to come. I want to always have a bed available for visitors to use when needed. It seemed silly, since the baby will be joining his big brother in a few years to tear the guest room apart for such a small time frame.

The conclusion:
I have decided that I can have both. I can have a decorated nursery AND a spare/guest room. The nursery will be in the spare room for the next two(ish) years until he is old enough to live upstairs with his brother. Plus, we usually only have visitors on the weekends, and it would be a simple solution to have the baby sleep in a port a crib when visitors are here. We have a plan to make a Murphy bed (stay tuned) to allow the nursery to have enough room to accommodate the crib AND a queen size bed. So, for the majority of the time, the bed will be installed into the wall. When visitors come, we will put the baby in a port a crib in the office and pull out the wall bed.

Has anyone else gone through a similar dilemma?

This weekend was a productive weekend for us, so stay tuned for:
Nursery Decorating Ideas Part 2: The crib transformation.

Published on January 10, 2011

19 thoughts on “Nursery Decorating Ideas Part 1: The Room Dilemma”

  1. We have a similar issue and the baby room and guest room are the same. When visitors come we just put him in a port-a-crib in the office. His room is upstairs though, it hasn't been that bad since he hardly ever wakes up in the night and his room is right above ours so I can hear him through the floor if he does.

    Also, I wanted to share with you that my husband and I were inspired by your entry way wainscoting and other projects, and I finally posted it on my blog, http://momjoy.blogspot.com/2011/01/been-busy.html

  2. Going through the same dilemma right now. We decided to turn the guest room into the baby's room. The office if being combined with the guest bed to be a guest room/office. We hope to eventually get a pull out bed for in there for more space. But now I'm intrigued by your murphy bed plans and can't wait! I think you made a wise choice.

  3. Glad you found a good solution! You could put the baby in the hallway, and I'm sure it would be the most fabulous hallway nursery in the whole world, and you'd single-handedly start a new trend. 😉

    Aloha,
    charlie

  4. What a great idea! I hope that you are going to be making your murphy bed and give us instructions as well. pretty please.

    Good luck planning and with your new addition.

  5. Murphy bed won't fit in the office. The office is a much smaller room and cannot accommodate a queen bed. The ultimate goal is to have all the kids upstairs.

  6. I plan on having a guest/nursery when I am expecting. My idea is two twin beds a portable crib. That way I can just move it and guest have a place to stay. I also found some side rails that you can put on a twin bed to make it toddler friendly.

  7. WE have a very similar dilemma. I'm due in March and we live in a 3-bedroom cape. My bedroom and my daughter's bedroom are upstairs. The guest bedroom is downstairs. What in the world are we to do? The solution for us is to have a bassinett in our room for a few months and we are decorating the nursery as the downstairs guest bedroom (but we don't get guests often, so we're eliminating the bed). When he naps, he'll sleep in his nursery. In a few months, we will need to reconsider the arrangement! I don't want him upstairs with my daughter while I'm downstairs, but I don't want him downstairs while we're upstairs. My daughter doesn't want to be downstairs by herself!! We will have a real dilemma in a few months! Might have to build an addition!

  8. I was crossing my fingers for the guest room/nursery and I was happy to see you went that way. Can't wait to see how you coordinate everything!

  9. I'd probably be tempted to put a temporary guest space in the basement and give baby the guest room for a couple years, but a murphy bed is a great solution.

    When I had my boys, I intended to move the oldest into the second largest bedroom (used to be my office) from the room that I had designated as the nursery — just as my second baby was set to arrive. Only problem was he really identified that room as his own and won't sleep anywhere else. So now his little brother has the bigger bedroom and both are happy.

  10. they just did this on dear genevieve. they used a day bed (which is good if you have enough room to pull out a trundle bed) then the mom could read or nurse or lay in there if she wanted to as well as guest. i think it's a great idea! congratulations.

  11. I love your blog! I also loved this post. When we had our fourth baby, the same dillema happened in our house. My darling fourth little bundle slept in his pack and play in our walk in closet for almost a year! I know, I am ashamed to admit it ~it was great! The quietest, darkest place in our house. My fourth, now three and a half just joined his big brother in his big boy bed. Good luck!

  12. A week or so ago I grabbed a copy of DIY magazine while in a loooong grocery store line. I was just going to browse while waiting but actually bought it because of the awesome murphy bed set-up it showed. It was an office/guest room combo, but would work well for a nursery. They bought a murphy bed hardware kit and built the bed. If I had better construction skills…!

  13. OMG.I am in same situation where i have to convert the guest bedroom to the nursery.Since our family comes from out of country the stay is more longer though
    So we are considering changing the guest bedroom in nursery and making the basement bedroom as a guest room
    Will be watching for your nursery

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