Mad Scientist Nursery Before and After Edition!

Okay so this was pretty much the best project ever. You know why? Because no one loves a theme room like this girl. And what’s a better theme for a nursery than “Mad Scientist Baby”? (I can brag because I didn’t come up with it.)

Annnnyyyywhooooo, lets get things going with some obligatory Before and After* shots:

The budget for this room was around $375. I say “around” because Sailaja said it wouldn’t be a huge deal if I went over. And I did… but more on that later. Basically, they had the crib, the glider, and the Freddie the Firefly and I was responsible for: a bookcase, curtains, a dresser that could double as a changing table, lamps, a side table, artwork, and bric a brac.

The other cool thing about this room is that it fostered some major DIY mania on my part. The main thing was the dresser. I bought it from Craigslist (duh) and paid $60 (which included delivery!). Then I destroyed it. Then I gave it back its life with several hours days’ worth of sanding, staining and painting.

Turns out, its way harder than you might think to find a dresser 37-43″ high that’s made of ACTUAL wood. This one even has dovetail joints (a good thing) and cleans up quite nicely if you ask me.

Also, I totally love the prism-y Astorp floor lamp from IKEA. For $25 ($40 with the shade) I thought it was pretty classy.

Now the other big project of the room was the Darwin curtains:

The curtains (originally made famous by this post) were actually the most expensive thing in the budget. At $20 a yard this fabric would normally be something I would deem too frivolous, BUUUUUT since it manages to have actual pictures of Charles Darwin in full beard and be for a baby girl’s room AT THE SAME TIME, I made an exception. So just like that $106 of the budget was vaporized. Totally worth it though. Totally, totally, totally worth it. Don’t get me wrong, beakers with faces would’ve been super fun too- but with the Darwin fabric we could go a little more sophisticated-nursery (which is a total thing BTW) and that is what all parties involved really wanted.

The Peg Board was $8 at Home Depot. I mixed the two paint colors “Simply Beautiful” and “Atta Girl” by Mythic to make this coral-y pink. Then I primed and painted the pegboard. (Priming here was super important because the pegboard had a slightly glossy finish.) Painted pegboard is def something I’ll use again. The baskets are specifically made for pegboard and were $10. They were black so I spray painted them using the same spray paint as…

The stool! Which is the IKEA Roxö and was originally orange. I made it silver metallic to look like a lab stool. The Gavik lamp is also from IKEA and it reminded me of some kind of glowing nuclear science experiment.

The bookcase is from Craigslist was $10- yes I said TEN DOLLARS. Of course, it involved a decent amount of schlepping but again, totally worth it. I thought the doors were so crucial for a nursery where there are soon going to be unsightly not-Scandinavian-designed toys everywhere. Put em’ away in your $10 bookcase!!! The molecule I made myself, its my favorite thing and I will devote an entire post to it later this week.

Just sayin’.

1. The beakers are another DIY that I’ll explain more in another post. FREE as a bird too.

2. Throw pillow from Target. I thought it looked like something under a microscope. I haven’t actually looked under a microscope in 15 years though, so who knows. I would’ve preferred a solid color actually but I couldn’t find one I liked.

3. The art was inspired by a few different versions floating around Etsy. To save money I re-mixed and re-created them on Photoshop and had them printed on cardstock at Staples for 89¢ each. To save money on frames I used clipboards which were like, $5 for all three. Plus, imagining a little baby holding a clipboard (like she had work to do!) made me giggle every.single.time.

4. Vintage microscope from Ebay. This was my baby gift. (HausWitch gives extremely impractical baby gifts!) It even came with all the little slides, and eye droppers, etc.

Finally, this lovely art from Gritty City Goods‘ Etsy shop tied everything together nicely.

So there. Phew! That was a long one I know. I’ll leave you with the final budget and some more pics. Stay tuned for DIY posts about the dresser, curtains, beakers and molecule.

Budget Breakdown:

• Fabric $106
• Spray Paint $6.36
• Heat and Bond $9.00
• Mythic Paint (dresser, pegboard & Supplies $45.62
• Pillow: $17.00
• Curtain Rings $10.00
• Frame $6.00
• Little Paints $3.00
• Clipboards $5.30
• Light bulbs $12.00
• Floor Lamp and Shade: $40.00
• Table Lamp $15.00
• Stool $13.00
• Fabric Art: $33.00
• Art Copies $3.00
• Dresser $60
• Molecule Balls $8.00
• Pegboard $8.00
• Braids Print (above crib) $24.00

Total: $424.28

So I went over. This was mostly because of supplies. The lesson here is: don’t assume that because its DIY that it will be cheap. It wasn’t a huge deal though so that’s good.

The moon is in Taurus and the witches say the 4th is “A Carefree Day”. Here’s hoping!

*I don’t intentionally take the “before” pictures at night with terrible lighting so the “afters” look better, but I also don’t mind that it usually works out that way…