Nursery Furniture

So we needed some furniture for the nursery - dressers mostly, we have a crib from when H was a babe. Do you know how exhausting furniture shopping is? Ugh... sales people that trail you like a lost puppy and huge stores full of too many options. Not to mention that we had a 2yr old - so either find a babysitter so you can wander around a store looking to drop big bucks on something that will probably be destroyed within the next 5 years, or take her with and have the destruction start before you even buy it. That's if you can even look at stuff in between trying to keep her entertained during this boring activity and chasing her around the obstacle course of a furniture store where kids can fit into areas I couldn't dream of squeezing into! Although I will say that bringing a toddler to the store gives you an iron-clad excuse to quickly ditch those sales folks - most don't stick around to yack your ears off trying to "connect" with you so that you'll buy from them if there is a rowdy little person continually trying to run off or butt into the conversation with nonsensical toddler-speak or screeches that piece eardrums 6 counties over.

But I digress... so anyways, after stopping at countless stores, we couldn't agree on anything except a set of furniture for our room! Not the purpose of our multiple trips, but it was a great set at an unbelievable deal. So we bought it. And I felt guilty. Not for spending the money, nope for buying furniture for ourselves instead of our new little one. Because not only was she not getting nice new furniture (like her older sister had gotten), but she was getting our hand-me-down furniture which I hated (2 sets of furniture, no matter how great the deal, did not fit into our budget). Here's a before shot (well really a during shot as some of the knobs have already been removed, but you get the idea):

Yep, ugly green and brown and to make matters worse it originally belonged to the hubby's ex. Yep, I lived with the furniture of my husband's ex-wife for about 4 years in our bedroom... does that qualify me for sainthood?

So the compromise to the whole guilt-inducing situation was to paint the old stuff and make it look and feel new:

Not bad huh? :) Now this I could live with. Most days I even forget what it was before. In the end we kept only this dresser as the tall chest was way too tippy for me feel safe putting in a kids room. The intent was to do some built-ins around the window, but wow the cost and time and effort were all much more than I was anticipating... so we may be on the lookout for a second dresser soon. I'm thinking a thrift-store or craigslist find could suffice for now (with more paint and new hardware again of course). Especially considering the outcome of this one. I really do like it and it adds a nice clean feel to the nursery (of which I hope to have officially finished soon!). :)