One Room Challenge Week 1: Dino Nursery Design Plan

I’ve wanted to participate in the One Room Challenge for the past 3 cycles, but life and our room update timing hasn’t allowed me to. This fall, the stars perfectly aligned to join the challenge as we convert what was our guest room into a nursery for our first born (human), Jake, who is due in early December.

For the next 8 weeks (as long as baby Jake doesn’t come early!), I’ll be sharing our progress as we transform this space.

Here’s where we’re starting from:

And here’s where we’re hoping to get to:

The Plan:

• Theme: Modern Dino featuring muted earthy wood tones with pops of green. My husband has always loved dinosaurs, and whether our baby was a boy or a girl the theme would have been dino!
• Planned projects: I’m including everything on my to-do list (apologies as some are not as riveting as others) since we have 8 weeks to work on this and ~9 weeks until baby comes.
  • The fun stuff
    • Adding fun design elements – I want to get the big pieces in and see where the room takes us. I’m very excited to work on the built ins & reading nook as that corner has so much potential. Some early thoughts that come to mind are adding textured or greenery wallpaper behind the book cases for a pop and adding paneling to a few places to make the drywall not as boring.
    • DIY dinos & artwork – again, I need to get the big pieces assembled/set up first, but who doesn’t want to build their own dinosaur?
  • The not as fun stuff
    • Cleaning out room – Adam uses this room to hold his clothes currently, and I have some knick-knacks stored on the book shelves. He’s only getting partially evicted, I’m getting fully evicted.
    • Assembling furniture
    • Fixing closet: the part of the closet that holds hanging clothes broke, fixing that is going to be Adam’s contribution
• Budget: For the first time, I don’t have an exact budget I’m trying to stick to. We’ve been extremely fortunate to have been given some hand-me-downs (like our crib that is the perfect natural wood), gifted some items from our registry, repurpose some existing furniture, and not have to paint (it’s already Behr’s Light French Grey, which looks perfect with the theme). So I’m saying there’s no budget not because I plan on investing a lot and getting crazy, but because I don’t think it’s going to be crazy expensive.
• Timing: The One Room Challenge runs for 8 weeks with final room reveals happening Nov 18-21. Baby is officially due on 12/12, but will most likely be here by 12/8. I’m honestly planning on being wrapped up a little before in case Jake makes his own reveal sooner, but sharing pieces each week to keep with the spirit of the challenge.
• Space: The nursery is located on the 2nd floor of our cape, and is a fairly decent size at 12’3″ x 18’11”

If you’re interested in learning more about the One Room Challenge, check out their website for all of the details of the challenge! Anyone can sign up (they let me register afterall!), its free to join, and my favorite part is how inspired I get by the other participants. You can follow along on Instagram with the #OneRoomChallenge & #BHGORC hashtags. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with this fall – good luck!