Baby’s Room 12-Week Challenge: Week Three + Opinions Needed!

Baby’s Room 12-Week Challenge: Week Three + Opinions Needed!

Big progress!

Over the weekend Joey stayed with her grandparents so Andy and I could spend aaaaallllll day Sunday working on installing a wide-plank wall in the new nursery. We love how it turned out and think it’s going to be so fun once it’s completed with a couple coats of pretty paint.

(Forgive the grainy photo. It’s too gloomy for natural light and there isn’t an overhead light installed in this room yet.)

A horizontal plank wall was a great idea Andy had to go with our beachy nursery theme. It has a rustic, casual vibe that definitely reminds me of some of the beach shacks we saw in Maui. We went with extra wide, almost one-foot-wide planks because a) it was easier and b) it has a different look than what we’ve been seeing everywhere else these days. We weren’t 100% sure how it would look, to be honest, but we love it. It’s unique and it visually expands the small room … plus fewer cuts meant finishing the whole wall in one day!

This is a relatively easy project, but definitely takes two people, plenty of uninterrupted time, and a lot of trips up and down the stairs to the saw in the garage. It’s also super cheap — would you believe this whole wall was only about $40? We’ll give you a complete rundown of how we made it once it’s finished.

Surprise! Here’s a peek at the wall color. If you follow @burritosbubbly on Instagram (and why wouldn’t you??!!), you may have seen a sneak peek on our Insta-stories of the base coat going up last week. We chose Valspar’s “Sea Wave” (5009-9C), which is a bright and happy turquoise/aqua blue. We put one coat on the wall under the planks, since you can see it between the boards, and we’ll hopefully finish painting the planks this weekend so you can see the final result in next week’s update. The rest of the room will be white (Sherwin Williams’ “Snowbound”) and we want to keep the room’s decor mostly white with a little bit of warm wood and fun accessories.

Which brings me to part two of this post … we need your help! (Again.)

We are having the haaaardest time choosing a dresser for the nursery. I don’t know if I’m being too picky or just have decision paralysis, but I’ve seriously looked at THOUSANDS of dressers. After all that searching, I’ve narrowed it down to five potential favorites. All have pros and cons, but we want to know which YOU like best!

But first, you need to know what the room will look like. You’ve seen our beachy baby boy nursery moodboard. To get a feel for what the room will look like in real life, though, here’s the moodboard updated with all of the pieces that we actually have purchased at this point (plus imagine lots of white and turquoise walls):

bamboo blinds | Hawaii print | pineapple pillow | pineapple crib sheet
grey rocking chair (from Joey’s room) | blue and white shag rug
warm wood side table | white crib

Our dresser criteria:

• must look good in the room, obviously — prefer all or mostly white to keep the room light and bright
• needs to be able to have a changing pad on top
• needs to have enough storage space for all of a little boy’s stuff

So here are our top five favorite dressers, and you can submit your vote afterwards with our easy-peasy new poll tool:

1. Overstock, $300 — 55.98W x 31.3H x 15.75D — super cool midcentury design, nice price, but 15.75 inches deep means it’s a quarter of an inch shallower than a changing pad. Will it drive me nuts if the changing pad hangs over the edge?

2. Houzz, $225 — 52W x 33H x 19D — great price and comes with a changing table on top that can be removed when baby no longer needs it, converting it to a standard dresser. But does the contemporary style fit the room? (Maybe with different handles?)

3. Buy Buy Baby, $550 –47.63W x 35.69H x 17.75D — very cute, love the white and wood combo (obvs), and it’s deep enough for a changing pad on top. But at 47″ wide it’s on the small side and also quite pricey.

4. AllModern, $200(!) — 62.3W x 31.5H x  15.8D — the color is a subtle whitewashed woodgrain, which complements the casual, beachy style of the room. Again this one is less than 16 inches deep, though. Besides the changing pad issue, that seems shallow for storage, right? Our other dressers are 18-19″ deep.

5. West Elm, $800 (on sale!) –54W x 34H x 18D — this is a total investment piece. It’s gorgeous. To be honest, we’d probably only leave this in the baby’s room until he outgrows a changing table, and then we’d give him my Ikea dresser and move this one to our room where it would be soooo gooood.  It’s something we’d have forever, which means only spending money once instead of again in a few years when we feel like upgrading to something else  … BUT do we really want to spend so much money now along with everything else baby will need? (That’s the ultimate debate of home decor, right?)

Click the button below to let us know which dresser you think we should choose! It’s so easy, you have no excuse not to. (But we also love-love-love when you leave comments!)

So next up on our to-do list is painting the planks, another coat of white on the other walls, another coat on the trim (does it ever end??) and then installing a light fixture and furniture and all the fun stuff. The crib is supposed to be delivered next week, so we’re definitely making progress… which is good because baby boy is due TWO MONTHS from Friday, eeeeeek!