Baby nook

Recently, the baby nook that Sarah and I designed and built was featured on the design blog Apartment Therapy.
Check out the photos and Sarah's writeup below, or click here to go to the original post.

"Neither one of us is into traditional baby stuff, so we tried to create a sort of urban/modern feeling with a healthy dose of playfulness. Our favorite component is the San Francisco skyline, which we designed and built ourselves (thanks to Oren's incredible woodworking skills). A shelf on top holds Liyam's tiny shoes and the front opens up to reveal extra storage space for wipes, burp cloths and other sundries.    

We found the bureau for $30 at a thrift store. It had good bones but needed some hard core cleaning, sanding and drawer un-sticking before we could prime and paint and paint and paint and polyurethane it. The red paint is called "California Poppy," which is awesome, and the drawer pulls are matchbox cars that we spray-painted silver and attached to screws--even more awesome. The spaceship print is by local artist Nidhi Chanani, who we discovered at a local street fair... I believe this was one of the very first things we bought for the baby."

- Sarah Persing

---

If I were to do it again, and I probably will, there are a few things I'd improve on. The skyline, though beautiful, forms a rather sharp point aimed at ones chest when accessing the inner shelf. Being stabbed by the Trans America Building in the middle of the night when changing a diaper is an unfortunate way to be jolted fully awake. Though maybe still preferable to being peed on. Version 2.0
would have a skyline that slides up to reveal the inner shelf rather than folding down.
The bureau has matchbox cars for drawer pulls. We had a blast picking out our favorites and spray painting them. Sarah is partial to sports cars and pick up trucks. I like the one that resembles the Batmobile. To attach them, the screw goes from inside the drawer, through the face, and through a plastic spacer, and then the car is screwed on by drilling a hole in it's chassis. Next time we'll look specifically for cars with metal chassis rather than the mix of metal and plastic that we ended up with since the plastic ones are a bit loose.
Other than that, this nook has been a life saver. I'm thinking it may need an airplane themed mobile or ceiling light above at some point. I welcome design suggestions if you've seen something that might be inspiring!