Room Designing for Baby: room layout

As mentioned in my previous entry our new baby's room had only one wall in which there was not a door or a window.  It's amazing in terms of light and natural airflow but a little tricky when you are trying to find usable storage and functional space for important bits of furniture like cots and change tables.  We were very lucky and inherited a majority of our baby things from my older sister.  The cot was one of these things and it was lucky enough to find it's home with our beautiful new change table on the only solid wall in the room.  Placing the change table and the cot on this wall meant that there was a nice amount of "play on the floor space" left for Mini and he could look out the window when he woke up and se the chickens doing their thing.  When he wakes during the day he can often look out and find me pottering in the garden as well.  He loves his view from his cot!

We spent quite some time looking for a change table because most of the ones that we saw had the change mat thing at the top and then just open shelves at the bottom.  Knowing how messy I am this was not going to be a sensible option for our house.  It also meant that the change table really only had one purpose in its life - being a change table.  We wanted a decent piece of furniture that could be used after the need for a change table was necessary.  As you can see the ones we found are a chest of drawers with a removable change mat at the top so that when Mini is older we can take the cushion off and he will have space to show of his trucks, sticks, leaves, rocks, fish, dead worms, what else do little boys like to collect I wonder???

The really interesting part of tuning this room into a bedroom was storage space.  We had to find space for a wardrobe as well as room to store toys, books, shoes, too big clothes, too small clothes and what else do little boys like to collect???

This is were the very good spatial/ mathematical brain of my husband came into play.  We decided that we needed to find a piece of furniture that would fit under the window and then run up the walls on either side.  We did not have to finances to get in a custom cabinet maker so we went to IKEA and hubby's brain set to work.  I won't bore you with the details of how he made it all fit but we used the Expedit range of furniture.

I wanted Mini to have some mirrors down low so that he could look at himself in them - don't all babies love to see other babies in their room even if it is just their reflection?!  We also needed some storage boxes that could hide some things that didn't need to be seen.  We opted for the seagrass cubes as they fitted in with the more natural feel that I wanted to create.  We also left a number of the cubes empty so that we could store Mini's books and toys.  I love the fact that by placing the shelves under the window Mini can practise his standing and he can pull down whatever is stored there himself.  He loves that he can be independent in his play and choose what he plays with for himself.

Baby room design: curtains

As mentioned in my previous entry I was determined to have some handmade elements in our baby's bedroom.  I initially thought that I would make the curtains from a fabric that I found in a fabric shop but after taking many trips to different fabric stores I came to the conclusion that most curtaining fabrics were either very, very plain but embossed with ugly patterning or they were way too colourful with quite ordinary prints on them.  As I mentioned in my previous entry, I wanted the room to have a calming effect but also spark my little one's imagination as well.  I ended up purchasing some plain mushroom coloured curtaining fabric with big plans to make it suitable for a room for my new bub.

This project was a slow one. I took a long time coming up with my plan of exactly what I wanted on the curtains and then I had get into the problem solving aspect of how I was actually going to make my plan work.

My decision: I was going to create a scene of what my baby was going to see when we went on our daily walks outside.  We live in a pretty spectacular valley that is 10 minutes drive to the beach if you turn right and ten minutes drive to a rainforest national park if you turn left.  I decided however, that Mini's curtains would show the animals that live right outside his window on the hill and in the creek.  

I made felt or fabric animals that I then sewed directly onto the curtains or onto the background scene.  I also created a tree for some of the animals to live in.  Many of the shapes for the animals that I made were inspired by the Dick Bruna books. 

Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo

Red Tailed Black Cockatoo

Sulphur Crested Cockatoo

I included a few of the animals that live on and in the creeks and swales

turtles

ducks

swamp hens

fish

We couldn't have a scene from outside the window without the ...

magpies

kangaroos  

koalas (we've been lucky enough to have one by the creek)

Mini is now over six months and I often find him looking at his curtains when he wakes from a sleep.  He loves the quacky ducks outside and has started reaching for them on his curtains.  He also loves the cockatoos and uses his bird sign to show me that he wants to touch them.  

I am happy with how the curtains turned out.  They were a labour of love and I was lucky that I had nine months to complete them.  Mini finds them interesting but they are not to bright and in your face for a room that needs to promote sleep.  It's fabulous to be able to talk to him about the animals on his curtains and then meet them in real life when we walk out the door.  

Room designing for baby

When I was pregnant with my little man I spent many conscious and subconscious hours designing how his room was going to look.  Having been to a number of Nature Kindergarten professional development sessions with Claire Warden and Nikki Buchanan I was very conscious of the fact that I wanted his room to have a calming effect.  It had to be a "natural" space where his imagination could wander.  Being a bit of a "greenie" myself I also wanted him to appreciate his space, the things he had in it and not to be overstimulated with too many toys or colours.  I wanted him to enjoy and be able to see the amazing scene that plays out on the other side of his window - trees, chickens, flower gardens and often kangaroos and ducks waddling around.  I love handmade things and I was determined to make some of the elements that made up his room.  The two main things that I made myself were his mobile and his curtains.  I'll show you more about these and how I created them in later posts.

My ideas were complicated by the fact that there was only one wall in the room that did not have a window or door.  There were no permanent cupboards in the room either.  The room also had to be suitable for a boy or girl baby as we wanted a surprise as to the sex of our baby on our birthing day.  we ended up going to IKEA for most of the furniture in the room and came up with a few tricky solutions to best utilise the small space that we had available.  This is just the introduction to my baby room design blogging.  Stay tuned for some more detailed posts on how and the reasons why I designed my baby's room in this way.