The Interior DIYer
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Our secondhand Stokke crib

When I was putting together ideas for the nursery, one of the main pieces we needed was a crib. Cora’s room is quite small and whatever crib we picked would be a big deal, so I wanted to make sure it was something we really loved before getting one. We went to a lot of stores and looked at a lot of cribs, but my gut feeling was to see if we could find a secondhand crib. I wrote about it more in my Nearly New Wood Challenge a couple of years ago; how for the most part I’m not too keen on buying brand new furniture, especially wood. 
I spent a few days looking through the cribs available on Adverts.ie and that’s when I spotted a secondhand Stokke Sleepi crib in walnut. It was so different to any other crib we had seen that it immediately gave me heart-eye emojis. Before I replied to the ad I looked up more information on the Stokke Sleepi crib and my doubts were drowned out pretty much by how incredible it is. 

A couple of text messages later and a thorough cleaning, Cora’s new [to us] crib was home. We didn’t use the mini crib as it didn’t fit in our equally small bedroom. I don’t know if we’ll end up using the bed until Cora is 10 [though it’s a nice idea to not have to buy her a bed for 10 years], but being able to use the end pieces of the cot as chairs? Game changer. “Look how much use we can get out of it!” Robert didn’t need too much convincing TBH. 

We paid €200 for our secondhand Stokke Sleepi crib which was €20 over our budget. I didn’t have a problem going over budget as I thought it was just too good to pass on. It came with newborn and toddler conversion kits which if bought new, including kits it would altogether cost us over €1,000. That’s not why we bought it though. It’s a gorgeous solid walnut bed [and it looks like Stokke no longer sell it in walnut] with simple lines and a killer shape. And even better, for my conscious at least; it didn’t cost the earth. 

To find out more, you can check out my Nearly New Challenge and Nearly New Wood Challenge. 

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Cora’s cute and quirky nursery

I’m slowly learning that time is now very different. BC [Before Cora], it would take me say, 45 minutes to tidy the apartment and get myself ready before heading out the door. Now? Multiply that by 4 and you’re starting to get close. Between feeding, changing, predicting how much to bring with me, getting myself ready, getting Cora ready, feeding Cora again, dealing with explosive situations and then actually leaving the apartment, I’m glad I have very few scheduled things these days. One thing I have been hoping to do, you know, when I have a spare minute [😑], was to properly photograph the nursery. Though it’s not entirely finished, it’s been at this stage since the week before Cora was born. So yeah. Getting things done nowadays takes time. Even if it’s just taking photos. Baby steps?

Our spare bedroom is quite small and I didn’t want to leave anything to chance, so I did what I quite embarrassingly love doing – I measured everything and made a little mock-up of the room on Google SketchUp. Here’s the design I decided on a couple of months ago … 

Before I bought anything or decided on a design detail, I did a mock-up of it in the space. I imported Pantone’s ‘Lunar Rock’ paint swatch before committing to it, drafted a combination of fancy and plain knobs for the nursery dresser before buying them, did up a rough placement of artwork and shelves before hanging them, decided whether or not a secondhand chair would fit [which, as you can see, none have just yet], what kind of rug would look the best, what would be the best placement for the crib – everything. Everything was decided on in SketchUp. I find SketchUp so helpful for making decisions digitally so you don’t have to make a disaster in real life. It was only today that I looked back at my plans and realised how close the room is to what I had hoped. I’m quite proud of that!

The room felt a bit stale when I was finished so I added a string of Christmas lights up and over the curtain rod to help make the room feel warmer and … funner. I really love Christmas lights and used to have them hanging up in my bedroom as a teenager throughout the year. When I first switched them on  in the nursery for Robert, he was so surprised by them and really impressed [thanks to the dark curtains, you can’t really see them when they’re off]. 

There are a few major pieces I have still yet to get. One being a proper bin [I’m currently putting dirty diapers into a plastic bag that hangs beautifully off one of the knobs on the dresser] and the other being a chair of sorts for the corner of the room. To give an idea of space, I put our buggy roughly where a chair would go, but I have yet to find a really great one secondhand to reupholster.
I also have a good few pieces of artwork to hang [like my baby prints by Bill & Coo.!] and some more fun pieces to perfectly place, but for the most part, this is Cora’s nursery. I feel like I say this in every blog post but if we owned our apartment, there would be so much more I’d do to the nursery. But we don’t. But I’m still so happy with our cute and quirky nursery. 

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#DublinDesignNight 2016

Last Wednesday night saw Dublin’s second annual #DublinDesignNight as organised by Yelp and Image Interiors & Living make its way across the city centre. I was pretty excited as it was my first ‘night out’ since having Cora, so while I unfortunately didn’t get to visit every venue on the map, I tried my best to get to a good few places before hobbling to the bus [it can be tough to walk and stand for long periods of time after having a baby. Who knew?].

I first visited Designist, where everyone was greeted with a hot chocolate not-so-secretly-spiked with rum. If this is something you haven’t heard of or tried before, TRY IT. I may just be my new favourite hot winter drink. 

I picked up another of The Handmade Soap Company‘s candles. I bought their grapefruit and may chang candle a few months ago and loved it, so this time I picked up one of their sweet orange, basil and frankincense candles. I also picked up an adorable frog patterned Bandana Bib by Little Green Dot for little Cora [which I have yet to use because it’s far too cute]. 
From there, I quickly visited Appassionata, Irish Design Shop and Industry. All of which were packed so I didn’t stay long. I made one last stop at Article before heading home. I’ve had my eye on their swan mobile for a long time and these days I find that if I don’t get something I really like when I first see it, it’ll be gone the next time I check. So I grabbed one [seen below yet to be assembled] and think it’ll be perfect over Cora’s changing table / dresser to keep her entertained and slightly less wriggly. I also saw one of those old-school clip in letter board signs, but as it was a little more expensive, it would more so be a mini investment. Which usually means I think about it non-stop for a week then end up taking a trip into town especially to get it. We’ll see 😉

You can read my post on last year’s and first #DublinDesignNight here!