Crafts by Abby: Audrey's Big Girl Room

With Audrey being only 16 months old when Andrea arrived, we decided to keep our gender neutral nursery as is, and move Audrey out to a "big girl" room. Really, it was another nursery, but with fun girly colors and themes that she could grow into as a toddler and preschooler, and maybe beyond.

First off, we bought another crib. I know. ANOTHER crib. But I'm soooooo glad we did. We hemmed and hawed, and looked at toddler beds, but as mature as our girl is, she's still an active girl, and it just wasn't worth chasing a toddler back to bed AND nursing in the middle of the night. We ordered both of our Graco cribs off the Walmart website and did the site-to-store option. They are great cribs!

Next, we knew we needed another changing table. After some looking online, Erik decided he really wanted to get something old and beat up at a thrift store or garage sale and fix it up. I had a chance to stop by our local thrift store, Helping Hands, and it just so happened to be 1/2 off furniture day! Score! They actually had a baby furniture set with a changing table/dresser and separate dresser, but it was fake wood and come to find out already purchased. Then I saw these two:

A few phone pics and conversations later, I purchased the short one. I was on my lunch break, and cutting it close anyway, and knowing we really just wanted a changing table, I figured this was as good as it was going to get. That evening, Erik was a bit disappointed because the top was laminated and going to be hard to paint. He went back to Helping Hands the next day to get the second dresser and even talked the guy into 1/2 off. I think we paid about $85 for both dressers.

He sanded them down really well. Unfortunately, I didn't get the other dresser mid-way. He ended up taking off the laminated top and making a new one with some leftover wood he had in the garage.

He painted the tall one white and we found these super cute pink acrylic drawer pulls at Target.

I hardly even noticed the cute detail at the bottom, and now that it's painted, it just pops!

We made the short dresser the changing table and picked a soft, pretty pink color for the drawer facings. We initially thought about going ombre, but I like this with the contrasting painted brass handles. If you notice in the "before" picture, one of the handles was missing. It was practically impossible to find a single matching handle to replace it, and only slightly easier to find a set of vintage handles that fit the holes already drilled in the wood.