MyChicagoHouse is expecting! We are in the process of flipping our guest bedroom into a baby room for our first child (a boy!) due in August. Thankfully we didn’t spend too much on the furniture in the guest room – only the Ikea bed, a needlepoint rug from Ebay and a side table from Chairish, and I’ve already sold the needlepoint rug (yay!).
I knew for this baby room I was going to need a crib AND a place for guests to sleep, but we weren’t going to be able to fit both the queen and the crib, so we had to get creative. First I plotted my floor plan in excel to get a sense of the space.
The bottom right door is our bathroom and top left is a hallway. The closet door is not pictured but it is on the bottom right wall adjacent to the bathroom door. The old rug (that I have since sold) was too small for the changes. It was always a bit small but it worked better with the bed.
I mocked up a new larger rug. Generally, my rule of thumb on rugs is bigger is better. You want to fill up the whole room. If measuring I do 3-4” away from the walls and get as close as I can with a standard size.
After I was happy with the floor plan, we found the Asmara rug of my dreams at http://www.rugsource.com (10′ x 12′) for <$450 and scooped that up with a rug pad, then purchased the Elsie Daybed from Pottery Barn on sale, with the trundle and matching crib.
PB oddly has two beds called “Elsie” but this one has the spindle sides. It is amazing how much more space we have! It will still do-able for two people to sleep in this room comfortably on Tuft & Needle mattresses (the top fits this mattress, but the trundle will need to be thinner from Amazon). While I did buy new twin sheets, I kept all of our queen bedding, folded it to fit the twins, and added some throw pillows from Creative Co-op at Target.
Our bookcase has always been a bit of a challenge because we were short on books and long on shelving. Now, we need to free up shelves for baby books, so I moved all of the books up and closed the gaps. This freed up nine shelves! The boxes that remain are empty, and I will leave them there until we have filled the space with books for the baby.
For now, you will probably notice that we do not have a changing table or chair in this room. I was planning to sit on the daybed and use that as a space to change the baby. We have all of our supplies on the back of the closet door that I customized. I know this isn’t ideal but the room is small and from the floor plans above you can see the door on the right-hand side is actually the guest bathroom, so 3/4 walls have a door on them.
It is possible we squeeze in a chair next to the crib in front of the bookcase but it seems tight to me. We are also in the process of getting blackout curtains made in a fabric that matches the wallpaper which, believe it or not, was cheaper than restoration hardware!
Let me know what you think about this room and layout!
MY CHICAGO HOUSE. 