The one with the...Baby Nursery (Part 2 - Furniture Makeover)

Now that the nursery is all painted, we move onto furniture!  With the exception of the crib, we got all of the furniture in the nursery used and some of it was even free!  

Dave's sister Susan, who is a super mom with 6 kids of her own that have all outgrown their baby stuff, gave us this changing table:   

It's nice and solid and just needed a new piece of wood and a fresh coat of paint!  

Dave cut a new piece of plywood to go on the top layer for the changing pad.  And after some sanding and a few coats of white paint, we were good to go!  In the meantime, I had been looking for baskets or bins to go underneath for storage.  After failing to find anything in the right size at Home Goods, TJMaxx, Target, Container Store, and Michaels, I finally found these Canvas bins at Walmart!  They were inexpensive AND they were free because on a walk with the dog one day I found a Walmart gift card randomly in the street.  I got a pack of two large bins and a pack of the three medium bins in navy blue. 

Here's the changing table after the makeover and with the bins:     

We also got a large dresser and matching night stand off of Craigslist for the nursery.  I knew we were going to refinish any furniture we bought used, so all I cared about was that the dresser and night stand was solid wood and of good quality.  We picked up these babies for $120 total!     

Nightstand before: 

Dresser before:

These two took a lot more time to refinish than the changing table.  First Dave took off the hardware and sanded down every surface with the belt sander with 60 and 100 grit sandpaper.  Then he switched to the orbital sander with 150 grit and 220 grit sandpaper.   After the sanding, we painted a coat of primer and then sanded some more. 

For the paint I went to the our hardware store that carried Benjamin Moore (BM) paint and at first I was looking for some no-VOC, no-odor BM paint.  But when I was there the very helpful folks at the hardware store introduced me to BM's Advance paint. 
Advance has the qualities of oil paint in a waterborne formula that cleans up with soap and water.  It is also self-leveling and is highly recommended to be used for painting furniture.  

   
The only downside is that you have to wait 16 hours in between coats!  Staying with the color scheme that we picked out for the nursery, I went to trusty Pinterest for ideas. This dresser was the inspiration for the color combination:

For the navy color, we chose BM's Old Navy and the white was BM's Decorator White.  The Advance paint was a lot pricier but we thought it was totally worth it because of the quality and also how easy it was to apply.  The whole painting process took a LONG time mainly because of the drying time in between coats.

Meanwhile I took the knobs and pulls and lightly sanded them and then spray painted them with multiple coats of Rustoleom's Universal Metallic spray paint in Satin Nickel:

And here's what we ended up with... Nightstand after:

Dresser after:

Dave's sister also gave us a glider, which just so happened to be white and navy! However, the cushions were a little worn out from use with multiple kids and her youngest got some sort of grease on the ottoman.  But the glider itself was in perfect shape and we were more than happy to have it!  All it needed was some new cushions and new upholstery.  

Once again I turned to Pinterest for ideas and tutorials on how to redo the glider. I found a few helpful tutorials online here and here. In the end, I basically concluded that I should just use the existing cushions as templates to make the new ones.   So off to the fabric store I went with my coupons in hand. I ended up getting 3 inch thick heavy duty foam, 4 yards of navy blue fabric, and a roll of batting.  

Dave took apart all of the cushions and removed the foam/fluff that was inside so that we could use the cover as templates. Then he started working on the ottoman and I started sewing!  We borrowed an electric staple gun from a neighbor for the ottoman (have we mentioned that we have the best neighbors?!) Dave cut out a piece of foam that was slightly larger than the board of the ottoman so that it would cover it completely.  Then he stapled down the foam wrapped in batting.  Next came the fabric itself. We quickly realized that using a striped fabric wasn't the smartest thing because we had to make sure the stripes stayed vertical to the ottoman.  

For all the other cushioned pieces of the glider I wanted to make sure that the covers were removable and washable.  I made sure to wash the fabric first before I started cutting just in case it shrinks in the wash.  Then I went, piece by piece, sewing the fabric together and adding on zippers to make them removable.  I also sewed straps with velcro on the back and seat cushions so that they could be secured to the glider itself without sliding down or off.  We did the arm cushions last because those were actually the most difficult.  The cushions themselves are  secured to the glider itself with snaps.  We couldn't reuse the snaps from the old cushions so we had to get new ones.  During another trip to the fabric store we got this heavy duty snap kit, which actually comes with the tool to secure the snaps to the fabric itself.  Thankfully Dave did all the securing of the snaps because it did require a bit of muscle power.  

Here's the glider after the makeover:

That's it for the nursery furniture!  We saved a lot of money by making over used furniture and paid for it in labor and time.  Although it's a lot of work, in the end, we are always glad we took the time and effort to do these types of projects because it's 100% customized.  Hopefully one day the baby will appreciate all the work we did on his nursery!  Special thanks again to Susan for passing on the changing table and the glider!