new nursery or new room for DS1?

klingb52

XP: Also posted in June 2011.

Just wondering what you would do...

We don't know the sex of baby 2.0 yet (July 2nd-if baby cooperates), but are trying to decide what we want to do as far as rooms goes.  We have a three bedroom house with all bedrooms upstairs and close together so planning for LO to be close is not a problem.

With DS, he stayed in our room for the first few months, but we loved having the nursery for storing his essentials, and of course, once we started sleep training, we moved him into his own room.  His room is gender neutral and not terribly personalized, so it would be easy to make the nursery for the new baby.

I am torn between redoing the guest bedroom for DS in a more "big boy" theme...I am thinking of a "cowboy" themed room or creating a new nursery for baby 2.0.

I know that if we do a room for DS, it would last awhile, but worry about changing his room with so many other changes coming along with the new baby.

If baby 2.0 is a girl, I'd love to do a more girly nursery and this would allow DS to stay where he is already comfortable.

The current guest bedroom is deeply in need of a rennovation anyway and DH and I are both teachers and want to get the room done while we are home on summer vacation.  Baby 2.0 is due at the end of November and DS will be 17 mos., so we want to keep him in the crib.

Any advice/thoughts?

celiabwatson

Can the crib move out of the room it's in without disassembling? That was a bit of a factor for us.

It sounds like either way you plan on redoing both rooms this summer. Either upgrading your son's current room and decorating a nursery in the other room or converting your current nursery for a new baby and giving your son a new big boy room. Does either option require less repainting?

I don't think moving rooms is too difficult for a little one that age, so I'd look more at the amount of work involved depending on your design ideas and choose based on that. 

jf198400

To me it seems like if you are planning to keep DS1 in the crib, you might as well leave him in his current room for now, and wait til he's ready for a bed to update the room.  Change the guest room into the new nursery.  This way you only need to do one bedroom this summer.

My DD was 18months when DS was born.  We decided to keep our gender neutral nursery as is, and moved DD into new big girl bedroom- with a twin bed.  DS is still sleeping in our room.  We waited until he was about 2months old to start transitioning DD to her new room/bed.

kagl08

We went through this dilemma before DS was born. We weren't sure if we should move DD to a "big girl room" but keep her in her crib (she's not even close to a toddler bed even now) or make a new nursery for DS. We ended up making DS a nursery and keeping DD where she was. She was going through enough changes already we didn't want to make he go through more. Plus, we decided DS should get a really cute room like we did for DD then make DD a new big girl room when she actually goes to a toddler bed. I'm glad we made this decision!

PaisleyRuth

We are/were in a similar situation.  We moved DS to the other/guest room for a few reasons:  (1) I'm too frugal to buy another crib, so DS needed to move to the big bed; (2) I cannot sleep with a newborn in my room, so keeping the baby in there for any length of time was not going to work; (3) the sizes of the rooms work best with the beds that are already in there (i.e. the nursery is a lot smaller, so really only a crib fits well in there - the other room is a lot bigger and had a queen bed in it). 

I had not done anything very theme-y in the nursery & definitely nothing hard to change, so I just moved DS's more boyish curtains & pictures of basketballs that were on the walls to his new room & got pink curtains and slightly more girly decorations for the nursery.  The paint is just neutral beige, so it worked with anything.

We moved DS to the other room/big bed at 15 months, so 3.5 months before his sister is due.  I figured that should be enough time to adjust & not feel kicked out of his room.  I think it has worked well because he was too young to be very attached to the nursery or crib, so he barely noticed.  I kept the nursery door shut for the first month plus after moving him so that he'd have a separation period from that room.  I just re-opened the door recently and started calling it baby sister's room, etc.

Just my experience . 

MichelleL1118

We're in the same boat. We're redoing the guest room/office as a big boy room for DS, and keeping the nursery as-is for DD when she arrives and eventually moves in there.  We've never really used the nursery for anything other than a place for DS to sleep, and storage for his stuff, so I'm hoping that the "new" room with all of his toys (and being child-proofed well so he can play in there) will help the transition.  We're also keeping him in the crib for a while, even though they'll be 21 months apart.

SweetHurricane

We decided to move DD1 into a new room. The main reason for doing this is that the new room is bigger (so more room for her toys/play area). We did a new more grown up theme for her even though she's still in a crib. The nursery has always been gender neutral, so we didn't have to change anything in there. When we bought the second (convertible) crib, we bought the same model as the first so that if they ever share a room their beds will match.