Harriet’s Pleasing Purple Nursery

Name: Harriet (6 months)
Location: Cheverly, MD

My husband and I moved to our present house about six months before our daughter, Harriet, was born. Turning the small bedroom into her nursery was, sadly, pushed to the end as our list of projects for the home (complete kitchen redo) grew longer and longer.

Finally, with about two months to go I knew I needed to sit down and decide what we were going to do. Honestly, I agonized for weeks over what colors to paint the room. While we were expecting a girl, I never wanted anything over-the-top pink girly, girly. One thing I did know was that I wanted to incorporate a colorful horse painting that my husband’s parents had given us. From that painting, I chose a color scheme that would coordinate: purple and green.

Knowing that I didn’t want to overwhelm the room with purple, I decide to create an accent wall with stenciling. For the other walls, I re-purposed IKEA spice racks into book shelves, spray-painting them white to coordinate with our modern Oeuf Sparrow crib. Of course, no nursery is complete without a rocker or chair. Unfortunately, our narrow staircase and small nursery meant most conventional rockers literally would not fit in the room. I needed something with a small footprint–enter the sleek Monte Design Joya rocker. It was the perfect choice–small but comfortable.

Finally, my favorite DIY piece is the dresser/changing table. My husband and I found this old brown dresser on the side of the road in our previous neighborhood a couple of years ago. We didn’t know what we were going to use it for, but it was a solid piece of furniture and figured we could make it work for something. During our move, I realized it would be perfect for a changing table. After sanding and repainting (I used the same green color as the stencil accent wall), and a change of hardware, it was ready to handle all the diaper changes we could throw at it.

Now having used the nursery for six months, there’s not a thing I would do differently. It’s perfect.

Lovely – thanks Mary! Readers, check out Mary’s photography work at Birchtree Photography (D.C.area).

(Images: Mary Schwarz/Birchtree Photography)

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