No Closet Solution for Kid's Room

In designing our son's nursery, I had to work around the huge obstacle of there not being a closet in his room. As we live in a charming 1920's home, this dilemma is unfortunately very common. Our "master" bedroom doesn't even have a closet, so we have to use the one in the hallway. Not the most convenient, but I suppose that's the trade off for charm. After maybe a second of consideration, it was evident that there was no way we could fit another person's clothes in there, especially little tiny ones that would only get swallowed by our abundance of fabrics. So, Solution: Turn a bookshelf into a closet!

BEFORE:

AFTER: 

Again, by using the oh-so-fantastic Craigslist, I found an old mission-style bookshelf for only $50. I wanted the piece to really have life, so I scoured the internet and stores to try to find vintage wall paper that I could use to line the back of the piece to give it a pop. This search soon became a mission. First, wallpaper is extremely expensive when looking at buying rolls. I looked at Goodwill to try to find a discounted roll but had no luck. I only needed about 2 1/2 yards, so buying a $40-$100 roll was ridiculous. Luckily, I found a vendor on Etsy.com that actually sells vintage wall paper by the yard. The one I chose for this piece, the orange fern print from the '60s, was only $3/yard....much better. After choosing the wallpaper, the only things left to pick out were the paint color, dowel and metal pole supports. If you are using leftover paint for this project, it really becomes a low-cost furniture conversion as the dowel and metal pole supports in total cost about $5. My husband applied the wallpaper to the back of the piece with spray adhesive and also added a protective clear coating on top of the painted portions to prevent scratching. I am quite happy with the way it turned out. It easily fit into an awkward nook in the room and provides lots of storage to hang clothes as well as have some folded away into baskets that will sit on the shelves. I also plan to designate the bottom storage with the door to hide those toys that seem to accumulate at a rapid pace for kids. Plus, it's at the perfect height for him to be able to learn to put his own toys away!

Dresser Makeover!

I originally fell completely in love with an orange dresser with white trim online from my favorite store in the world Nadeau; however, when I drug my husband and mother-in-law the 2 1/2 hour drive (one way) all the way to Chicago to check it out, and, of course, buy it....I was disappointed when I saw it. Well, to start with I was going to use this dresser as a changing table for the nursery. The size was okay as I knew the dimensions before the mission, but the quality of the piece was not like the other Nadeau gems. The drawers basically fell out and even more strangely was that the drawers were only half the size they could have been, meaning they only went back half the depth of the piece. Strange. I had to cut my loss and move on despite how hard it was. It was not practical. Plus, it cost $314 and wasn't even solid wood. I could only imagine our little guy pulling out the drawers and them tragically falling on him when he is one day mobile. Couldn't do it.

I was still enamored though with the color and style of the piece, so my husband and I scoured Craigslist to try to find an old dresser that needed some TLC. My husband found the perfect piece, a claw-foot dresser. It had amazing bones where I could pull out the white trim I so wanted against the orange, and it was solid wood! After much sweat and frustration from my husband (poor thing), he was able to sand the entire piece, pull out all the tacky drawer lining and apply the many, many coats of paint to pull out the right color. I have to pay homage to him for this project, as I was purely the visionary and he, the heart and love.   

We purchased the dresser for $75 off Craigslist, and purchased the hardware from 2 suppliers on Etsy.com for a total of $33 including shipping. The white paint was leftover from the paint we used for the baseboards and the orange was a Behr $30 gallon from Home Depot. We had thought about painting the hardware white, like the trim, but the character that the patina showed on the old knobs just took on a beauty of its own. Plus, as you will see the nursery unfold, it meshed perfectly in with the rest of the room. To tie it all up, we got a beautiful solid wood dresser with more storage and for less than half the cost of the original inspiration. Gotta love it!