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Reworking Our Rooms ... Making Space For Baby!

Recently I had that dream where you discover rooms in your house that you never knew existed.

How cool would that be? Entirely new rooms to decorate and ... SPACE. MORE SPACE.

Can I just stream-of-consciousness-style write a little bit about what we're working with now? Okay, here goes.


We are in a one-story, three bedroom home. Currently, we have the following setup:

+ Master bedroom

+ Camille's room

+ Home office with a desk (primarily for Ian) with laptop/printer, small side desk with my sewing machine on it (not used super often, but I like having my own creative space), and pullout sofa/side chair/coffee table area. The pull-out sofa is nice to have for visitors, although the visitors are typically our moms, and they just sleep on the couch. Crazy, but it's suuuper comfy and only moderately comfy when properly used as a pulled-out sofa. It's also nice to have this if one of us is sick/coughing and wants to sleep in a separate room.

The new baby's arrival in April is going to come quicker than we know, and I'm a procrastinator by nature, but I'm trying to get a leg up on switching home stuff around so that I'm not moving furniture at 38 weeks pregnant. Not that Ian wouldn't help me, but I'm guilty of the "I'll just do it myself now" mentality. :)

So here's our plan ... 

+ Camille will move into the current office because that room is bigger. This way, we can eventually have two twin beds in the room (that makes it usable for a guest room if we really needed it, she could be in a pack and play or cot/sleeping bag in our room). The room will house her larger toys, and hopefully the play kitchen I want to give her for Christmas. I want a lot of her bigger, more obnoxious (ha) toys to navigate from our current living room to her room. It will make the living room nicer-looking, and this will also give us a place to play in her room when Ian's working in the new home office ... more on that later. We will move her current crib over, and we will need one more panel of her beautiful floral drapes since her current room has one window and the new room has two. The room is presently a light, mossy green so it will need to be repainted.

This is the kitchen
I love from Amazon - so cute!
$138 currently - found here


Camille's drapery fabric

+ The new baby will be in the smaller room -- Camille's current room. The changing table will stay in there ... Camille doesn't really need one any longer, too wriggly. We will need a new crib in this room. Since we likely won't find out the gender this time around, it will stay pink for now and get painted a different color if needed after baby has arrived. Not gonna stress about that right now! The bookshelf will stay and new, gender-neutral drapes will be needed. The crib skirt and changing pad skirt are green and white, both will stay in this room.


Current changing table skirt -- crib skirt in same pattern

+ Our dining room is becoming a home office! Pro: A room that we rarely use these days will now become really usable, livable space. Con: This room is smack dab in the center of our house and right off of the kitchen and living room -- both loud areas. Ian uses a home office quite a bit, so I do have anxiety about staying at home with the children and not disrupting him too much. That's another reason why I want room for big toys in Camille's new room. I need to sell the dining room table, move the china cabinet and another small table out, and focus on STORAGE in this room. We will need it to house office necessities like computers, books, a printer, office supplies, et cetera ... and not look sloppy since it's a very visible room. 

We are going to have a French door installed where there is an open doorway that currently leads right into the kitchen. I'd love to have two back-to-back desks in the center of the room (centered mainly to justify keeping our chandelier in the room and not having to put it in storage). My question here is what to do about all of the wiring/cords since the desks will be floating. I don't want them to be a danger if they are run across the floor (even covered with a cord concealer) to the outlet. I want to have a network guy to come out and install everything so that it's done properly and neatly ... not like the messy current situation we have going on. 


Ideally, a desk like this
with storage on both sides.
Two back-to back, his and hers.
$220 currently - found here

Other than that, there are a few other follow-ups ... if our new baby is a boy, do I move the royal blue and white rug in the den to the nursery? It would look cute with the emerald green. Then the black and white rug in Camille's nursery could go out in the den and our coral/blue den would turn into a coral/black/white den. That would also mean a new rug for Camille's big room.

So, the truth is, I wrote this post more for ME than for YOU because I am sure it was an absolute snooze to read.

If you made it this far, you likely are in a similar position with your home and were somewhat interested. If you just scrolled down to the bottom and are reading this sentence now, I don't blame you!

I'd love to hear advice from anyone who has made these sort of changes. Help me not lose sleep at night, ha!

25 comments:

  1. I have no idea how I missed that you were expecting... That is so exciting!! Congrats, mama!

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  2. I applaud your hard work! It'll be a transition for everyone (not just the second baby part), but I know you'll make it work! Can't wait to see the final product!

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  3. Loved this post! Need to start brainstorming for when it's our turn for #2! ..not that I'm a type A planner or anything..haha thanks for the inspiration!

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  4. I can't help in this area but I am excited to see what y'all end up doing!! Sounds like you're utilizing the space nicely - I probably would've pushed to move ;)

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  5. These changes all seem like great ideas, can't wait to see how it all comes together. Definitely planning ahead will keep you from worrying closer to the due date! That little play kitchen is darling and she'll love opening that Christmas morning!!

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  6. We are getting the same kitchen for Christmas too! So far we only have our little girl, so I know I should go with the white neutral option but... I just have to get the pink! Haha hopefully you can get the organization squared away!!

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  7. I must have missed your announcement, so I'm sorry for the delayed congrats!
    Looks like all kinds of fun plans are happening to prepare for baby! Love that desk--we have one similar that we got at Office Depot for a pretty good price (after our movers broke our old desk).

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  8. Lots of decisions to make! But I like design decisions! We are currently changing a nursery into an office, so similar but kind of opposite at the same time ;)

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  9. April, where is your wall shelving in C's room from???

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  10. You have a perfect plan! As for the electrical in your new office, just have an electrician run a couple outlets to the center of the floor from underneath your house. That way they are hidden now (between or under the desks) and would be if you had a table back on it in the future.

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  11. I love the plan. I know a lot of people never use their dining rooms. In my parent's house, the formal living room was converted into my Dad's office with french doors and now the dining room collects lots of random things since it just houses a piano, the china cabinet and the wine rack.

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  12. Love love that the gender will be a secret!! So fun! How about get rid of the changing table?? Just get a changing thick blanket you can use on the couch bed or floor! 2nd time moms get it much more. I always had diaper baskets in every room that we were in with diapers cream wippies etc. It would free up space for something more functional. Just a thought!!

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  13. Just wondering if you had considered having them share? I know a lot of people up here (Minnesota) have their kids share until they hit school age and need more privacy. Was wondering if it's not as common in the south? I think you guys are so smart to 'repurpose' a room that is not being utilized! So many people are afraid to rethink their home's original layout.

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  14. We just moved out of our tiny California home last month and it was technically a 2 bedroom. We made a little sitting room/nursery off our bedroom when we found out we were expecting #2. It worked really well because we kept all the toys extra's in my son's much larger room. I was so afraid of having them share but for our month of transition between old house and new house, they shared a room in the hotel and did really well together. Minimal waking one another up at night... Not sure if that thought has crossed your mind at all, but maybe to keep your space it might be an option to consider. Anyway, I can't wait to see what you decide and see all the changes!

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  15. What a great plan! You may scoff at this, but our children were 17 months apart (NOT planned). We moved big sis out of her crib at 15 months and never looked back. It worked SO, amazingly well, we did the same with little brother. I realize most people wait until 2 or even 3 to do this, but we were determined to not have to buy another crib. and it so paid off! She would call to us every morning until she was 4 (until we told her she was old enough to get out herself). My son did the same thing. It's like if you start them early, they don't know not to climb out, etc. They also seem to become very emotionally attached to their crib, the older they get, as I've witnessed from friends and sisters.

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  16. I've been out of touch - congrats on Baby #2! I'm an April baby, so I must say this little guy or girl will most definitely be awesome ;-) I remember having to work Farrah into our 4-bedroom house and one of our rooms had to stay an office...we ended up bunking the boys...we just moved to a larger house with 4 bedrooms but there was a bonus space for an office, so everyone is back to their own rooms again, which is nice. Can't wait to see all the progress on all of your spaces during the switcheroo!
    Morgan
    California To Carolina
    The Gym Bunny

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  17. We converted our dining room to an office as well! We have a kitchen nook so it was better suited as an office. The desk is somewhat in the middle and you can have someone come out and put the cords up through the floor. Works great! And when we host for company we still use the desk for food!

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  18. Oh my gosh I must have missed your announcement... congratulations!

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  19. Definitely wasn't a snooze to read... I LOVE reading stuff like this, and I love your hand written notes. Your thoughts seem very similar to my own when facing something such as this. And you're right... April will be here before you know it, so pats on the back for getting started now, Momma!

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  20. So this post gave me a big fat feeling of "ugghhhh don't remind me!" so last night I spent about 20 minutes shuffling things around in the junk, I mean guest room... theennnnn I gave up and watched an episode of Nashville on the dvr. At least you've got me thinking about doing something, that counts, right?! : )

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  21. I'm not in need of switching up rooms BUT, I love this sort of stuff & always enjoy seeing/reading how other people use their spaces! Everything will come together perfectly!!

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  22. Hah, i do love some logistics!! i mean without seeing the actual layout of the house it doesn't make much sense but I even love the chatter of it!

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  23. I think your plan is perfect! We just had to relocate Corey's home office out of our 3rd bedroom and into a very small room downstairs that was my office and craft room. As of right now, I can't imagine returning to work the year Baby arrives so it didn't phase me to lose "my" space at all. I think your idea to have a professional handle the cords is worth it as well. We did a much better job of concealing them this go around and it looks much, much better than in Corey's precious office. We have a similar desk for him and I love the storage. His job is paperless for the most part but it is very nice to have it for tax documents and miscellaneous papers we need to keep. I think you'll just have to play around with the rugs and see where you like each better once baby is here and you know the gender.

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  24. Maybe you don't have to move out the china cabinet. I don't know what it looks like but I have seen some pretty fancy china cabinets in all kinds of offices that make amazing storage units/book shelves and they hide the printer, supplies, you could add pictures. Also, don't be afraid to move that chandelier. It would look great in a corner over a reading nook.

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  25. Do you guys have a crawl space where they could just put the outlet in the floor? That'd def help with the wires issue. So perfect for family members homes and we'll be doing that ourselves soon. And SMART call on the French doors. We plan to do that for our dining room and living room entries as well.

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