Paul’s IKEA Nursery

In today’s post, Paul shares how shopping at IKEA allowed him to pull together his son’s great-looking nursery for less:

Are you in the market for safe, sturdy, attractive baby furniture, that won’t break the bank or your back? IKEA, to the rescue!

Well known for their flat pack, smart furniture solutions, my wife and I were already big fans of IKEA products, with many pieces of their furniture in our home. When it came time to furnish the nursery for the new bean, we headed over there to check out their baby options.

We already had some items from the Leksvik range in our spare room – a couple of side tables and a taller chest of drawers – so when we were shopping for baby furniture, we decided to check out the rest of this range, and build out a cute nursery that would grow with the baby.

The Leksvik crib at $160 looks great – its construction is solid, and it converts into a toddler bed, with removable sides and a base that drops down in height. The sides are fixed, which seems to be the safest option these days!

The Leksvik cabinet and changing table at $170 is another well-constructed unit. The changing table has four sides for safety and we put an IKEA changing pad in there. Some storage totes from IKEA go into the cubbies for spare diapers and other supplies, and we keep his jammies and onsies in the drawers underneath. The best bit? When he doesn’t need a changing table anymore, that pops right off and we’ve got a nice cabinet for his room.

We matched all this off with a Leksvik four-drawer dresser at $150 to give us some table space for his toys, and store his blankets, socks and other supplies in.

We now had several pieces of furniture, from the same range, that will grown with bean for years to come. It’s all good looking stuff too!

IKEA isn’t all about furniture either. If you’ve never been, you’ll be amazed at the stuff you can buy. We loaded our cart with cute dog shaped laundry baskets, crib mattresses, pads and fitted sheets. The changing table pad and fitted sheets were all IKEA, as was a hanging toy basket for his cuddles, and the teething guards for the crib sides.

You’ll also see that our nursery has a futon in it – guess where this came from? Yep, IKEA! We already owned this, and the glider (which came from a local discount store, not a baby store, and probably cost us about $50 with the glider foot stool). That corner lamp? IKEA.

Nothing we brought home feels cheap – it’s all quality stuff, solidly built and constructed, but at much cheaper prices than you would see in your typical baby store. IKEA have a ton of options too, including some much cheaper furniture, and some really clever storage solutions – from free standing hanging units, to cool totes and boxes to store stuff in. They sell toys, trains, cuddles, colorful storage boxes and chests – you name it.

Even better than it being a good, reasonable price, the Leksvik crib gets great safety ratings (Best Buy!) from Consumer Reports, so we are very happy with it!

We stretched our budget even further for this nursery – those photos on the wall were taken by me, of some of his toys that we bought before he was born. The two rugs were stitched – one by Mom during her pregnancy, the other by his Grand-Mom in the UK. the cross stitch on the wall has his name and DOB for a personal touch, a gift from a friend. We only painted one wall, and stuck little wooden animals on it from a craft store to make it a jungle wall.

What do you do when even the ingenuity of IKEA fails you? Turn to the awesome resource that is Ikea Hacker. They will help you find matching wood stains, give painting advice and even more.

Oh, and IKEA sells wicked meatballs