HOME | A New Look for the Nursery

A new look nursery for Max…

AD | Contains products provided in exchange free of charge, plus gifted items from previous collaborations.

What do you do when you’re so knee-deep in home renovations that you literally can’t walk from one room to the next without falling over a pile of power tools and random planks of wood?

Why, you get started on ANOTHER project, obviously!

Yes, before you’ve even finished the first one. Well, I mean, it’s not like we really NEED a clean, tidy house, after all, is it? And you get used to the building dust eventually. Or, at least, I HOPE you do, because it looks like we’re going to be living with it for a while longer, unfortunately. We might not be finished with our stair reno, though, but when UK Flooring Direct got in touch about a potential collaboration, we figured it was the perfect opportunity to make a change to Max’s nursery that we’ve been talking about for months now. And here it is:

Yup, we got rid of the old beige carpet that came with the house, and replaced it with this gorgeous engineered wood instead. I actually have another post planned on the reasons for this change – and some of the other updates we’ve made to the nursery since we first put it together – but, for now, here’s the finished result:

In the nursery:

Cot and changing table c/o Kidsmill; IKEA Avsiktlig rug; IKEA Kallax shelving unit

Now, Terry and I are fairly used to the process of changing flooring now – sometimes through choice, and sometimes through, well, flooding, basically – but this was our first foray into the world of engineered wood (Which is a type of flooring which is 100% wood, but made from different layers stacked together, rather than just one solid lump of wood…), so we were just a little bit apprehensive about it. When I say it was our first foray, you see, it was the first time we’d used this type of flooring in our home, yes, but it wasn’t the first time Terry’s tried to fit the stuff. I still remember the saga that ensued when he helped my dad fit engineered wood in my parents’ living and dining room, for instance: they’d both fitted laminate flooring quite a few times (In Terry’s case, I somehow persuaded him to laminate every single floor in our last house, other than the bathroom. Twice.), but this was a whole different story, and, well, it wasn’t a particularly fun one, let’s just put it that way. (It was also really tough on me and my mum, who had to sit around drinking wine the whole time, but you do what you can to help, you know?)

Happily, though, this was much easier to fit than my parents’ floor, and, in Terry’s own words, it needed a harder “clump” to get it to click than laminate does, but was easy to cut, and very forgiving to work with, so he was pretty happy with it, and kept commenting on the lovely lemony scent it had as he was fitting it – so, either he’s so tired from all of the DIY he’s been doing lately that he’s started imagining things, or we have am explanation of why this particular flooring is called ‘Lemon Sorbet Laquered’ on the UK Flooring Direct website. I’ll let you decide…

Max’s toys:

Mini Loog guitar; Steiff teddy bear ; personalised rocking mamoth c/o Not on the High Street; Miffy nightlight c/o Mr Maria

It’s a very woody kind of wood. Which is nice, really: it reminds me a bit of the floors in the Edinburgh flats I used to frequent as a student, only much, much nicer. And whiter. Also cleaner, actually, but that’s a story no one wants to hear, so, moving on…

(The gold stars came from a local garden centre a couple of years ago. My mum actually bought them with the intention of using them as Christmas decorations, but, well, you can see how that worked out…)

Of course, while the new floor definitely had the desired effect of making the room feel instantly lighter and brighter, it also had the slightly less desirable effect of making me want to change a bunch of other things, too. So, Terry spent a fun 20 minutes switching sofas and armchairs between the nursery and office, only for me to decide that, nope, I liked them better the way they were, actually, and then I decided we had to replace all of the artwork on the wall behind the changing table:

Artwork:

Being Normal is Boring canvas; Better an Oops Than a What If; Hello – c/o Posterlounge

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the prints we’d originally picked out for this wall (And we’re planning to use them in our stair project, so they won’t go to waste), but I felt the new look called for something fresh, so we’ve gone with these guys – and a bit of an unintentional Bulldog theme – instead. We put these up right before Max went down for his afternoon nap, and when he woke up, he was so excited to see them on the wall, and kept pointing at the little dogs – so sweet!

So, one project down, one more to go – and then, if I ever mention home renovations again*, you can all feel free to reach through your screens and slap me, I swear.

(*Unless it’s the bathroom. I really, really hate our bathroom.)

(*Or the en-suite. Hate that too.)

(*Would also quite like to do something with the wall the TV is on in the living room.)

(*I’ll stop now, I promise…)