Nursery Makeover Part 4 - Changing Station DIY

Nursery Inspiration

When planning the design for my nursery, I found so many adorable ideas on Pinterest, it was hard to choose just one!  Rather than  just choose one, I decided to take inspiration from several different places and create my own design. 

I knew from the start that I was going to give my dresser to the baby (well really, my dad's old dresser - thanks Mom and Dad!)  It was definitely dated: stained a kind of orangish brown, with brass handles, but it is similar to the one above in dimensions.  I knew it would work perfectly as a dresser and changing station. 

We purchased a fairly cheap, white paint, from Lowe's, spraying the dresser with multiple coats.  I knew I did not want to leave the current handles on the drawers, so I began looking at hardware stores, Hobby Lobby, and Amazon to find the perfect knobs.  I quickly realized that I did not want to spend $5 a knob on the 6 knobs needed for the dresser, but that was a fairly average cost for the kind of knob I was trying to find.  Finally I found the perfect solution on Amazon! I found a pack of 10 knobs for $9.99.

There was one tiny problem to purchasing these knobs - the current handles on the dresser had two holes, rather than just the one required for these knobs.  However, my husband offered the solution of filling the extra holes with putty, and painting one final coat over the dresser.  It is hardly noticeable that the handles used to have two holes!

The next step in this project was finding a cute lamp to sit on top of the dresser.  However, as I began looking I realized that all of the adorable lamps I had pinned on Pinterest were actually very expensive.  Again, I couldn't justify spending $30-$50 on a lamp that I didn't really NEED (don't tell my husband I said that ;)

Thankfully I began this project early, and had plenty of time to look for a good deal.  Again I searched the internet, yard sale sites, and every store you can imagine.  I finally stumbled upon a deal on a local yard sale site.  A woman was selling 3 lamps for $8.  Two of the lamps weren't in very good condition, but I wasn't concerned about those anyway, I just wanted this one:

This lamp was regularly over $30, and I knew with a little elbow grease, I could transform it into the perfect princess lamp!  I tossed several ideas back and forth about how I wanted to refinish the lamp, but finally settled on purchasing a Champagne spray paint from Home Depot.  I'm pretty sure this spray paint is my favorite I've ever purchased - The color turned out absolutely perfect!

The next step was finding a lamp shade, but again, I didn't really want to invest a lot into one.  Thank goodness for yard sale sites!  I found this adorable cream lamp shade for $2.

When looking for inspiration for my changing station, I knew I wanted a mirror that was "Snow-White" style.  Most of the nursery suggestions I found had a mirror similar to the one in the image at the top of this post.  I again searched the internet as well as several stores to find a pretty (and affordable) mirror.  I finally settled on this mirror from Hobby Lobby.  It is originally $34.99, but I purchased it with a 40% off coupon for around $22 after tax.  I didn't mind spending a little bit more on this item, as I knew it would be the centerpiece of the wall art for the changing station.

The rest of the items I decided to hang on the wall were either gifted to me, or I had made them previously and just stole them off of other walls in our house.  The final item I needed for this project was a changing pad and a cover (which I was given as well.)

The hardest and final step to this whole project was just trying to decide how I wanted to layout all of the wall art that I had.  I'm still not sure if I am happy with how I chose to hang them, but at the end of the day, almost everything on the wall has some sort of sentimental value, so I couldn't bring myself to take anything away.  Shout out to my husband, Tyler, for being patient as I changed my mind about 238743987234 times before I decided how I wanted to hang everything!

I hope you've enjoyed another sneak peak at our nursery DIY!  Keep your eyes open for our upcoming full nursery reveal!


~Ty, Kay, and Babe