As a new (or experienced) parent, getting everything ready for your new baby can be exciting. For that reason, a nursery renovation might be on your mind. That among how many diapers you might be changing and how much you can expect to spend on the first year of parenthood.
Regardless, a nursery is a fun place to get creative and prepare your space during the nesting period of your pregnancy. For my first, I wasn’t as keen to spend time and money on a nursery because we were renting. However, as a homeowner, it’s now much more ideal for spending the effort to put together a long-term space that the entire family can enjoy.
How Did We Decide on a Nursery Theme?
Perhaps one of the most complex parts of a nursery renovation is deciding on a theme that makes sense. You’re stuck between the multitude of options Pinterest throws your way and the moral dilemma of will my child actually like this when they’re five or six? Let alone when they’re a teenager.
Do you need a theme? Absolutely not. But for us, it sounded like a fun way to involve our firstborn to make the transition to a family of four more seamless. We asked our daughter to pick out a stuffed animal for her new sibling to decide on our nursery theme. Whatever stuffed animal she chose would determine where we went as far as a themed bedroom.
After visiting a store and spending a few minutes trying to explain that she couldn’t keep every stuffed animal in sight, she chose a lion teddy bear for her soon-to-be baby brother. A jungle theme was in the works, and we started to make a real plan to get to work on our nursery renovation.
How to Make a Nursery Renovation Budget
Budgeting for any home renovation can be tricky, but luckily, most start with the same steps to determine your cost. To start, make a list of all of the necessary changes you’ll need to make in the bedroom or space.
From there, we looked at inspiration photos and began to map out what we may need to buy and how much, on average, each of the purchases would cost. An essential part of this step is to consider what you already have to help reduce expenses. For example, as second-time parents, we already had a crib, rocking chair and a few small accessories that would fit in the space perfectly, cutting down on our bottom line.
Next, we split all of our ideas into needs and wants to figure out a baseline budget and a non-essentials budget and worked together to develop a fair number.
According to HGTV experts, a full-blown bedroom renovation can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 — but seeing as we are working on more of an improvement, we knew we’d be much lower than that.
After doing the math and putting together a timeline for savings, we determined we would attempt to keep our budget under $1,500, given that we had most of the more significant pieces of furniture we’d need to finish the space.
What Kind of Furniture and Setup Do You Need?
One of the highest costs in any bedroom makeover can be furniture and paint. Although we had all of the furniture we needed on hand, we still had to buy paint and accessories.
For context, here are some of the everyday furniture items you might need when doing a nursery renovation or upgrade:
- A crib or bassinet
- A changing station
- Rocking chair
- Clothing organization
- Toy and book storage
- Window coverings
The average cost of each of these items will vary depending on your taste, but for the most part, you can find them for around the $100 mark and sometimes less if you opt for used furniture.
Here Is Our Before:
How to Choose Colour and Accessories for a Nursery Renovation
Painting our nursery in a jungle theme meant going green. We could have chosen one colour to cut costs, but we thought it would be fun to purchase two slightly different colours to paint each wall differently. We also had to buy some painting materials to do the job, such as brushes, masks, and painter’s tape.
Because I was six months pregnant during our renovation, my husband did most of the painting, and we were able to finish the job within one weekend.
From there, my subsequent purchases were small but included the following:
- A storage unit from IKEA for closet organization
- Printed pictures and frames for the wall
- Jungle theme decals from Etsy
- Shelves to hold baby books and toys
We were also gifted a fun and funky jungle-themed mobile from my sister that she purchased from Etsy. All in all, the most challenging part about accessorizing a nursery renovation is trying to hold back from the endless options that exist.
Here Is Our After:
What Was Our Bottom Line?
Our nursery renovation was enjoyable compared to some of our other home improvement projects at the end of the day. Choosing a theme, accessorize and rework our old furniture into the space was a good challenge.
In total, here is what we purchased and the total cost of our nursery renovation:
| Item | Cost |
| The closet organization purchased from IKEA | $80 |
| Paint and materials purchased from Shermin-Williams | $170 |
| Bookshelves purchased from HomeSense | $40 |
| Artwork and frames purchased from Canva and IKEA | $40 |
| Wall decals purchased from Etsy | $110 |
| Total Cost: | $440 |
For anyone who is curious about the cost of the furniture we previously owned, here is the breakdown:
| Item | Cost |
| Crib | $450 |
| Dresser | $270 |
| Rocking Chair | $300 |
| Total Cost: | $1,020 |
Even if we had opted to buy furniture brand new for our nursery renovation, we would have managed to stay under our initial $1,500 budget, which I can proudly say is a great success.
