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In the Moment: Making Room for Baby

We live in a gorgeous one bedroom Edwardian apartment. Since May, we've been trying to find a similar space with two bedrooms in The Mission, Potrero Hill, or Noe Valley neighborhoods. We've been unlucky enough to come in second on multiple places. So we're going to make our cozy apartment work for three.

Cleaning out closets for the baby

Our apartment has lots of storage space: a small closet with drawers in the bedroom, a walk-in linen closet off the hall, an old maintenance closet that's been converted to a storage room, and a walk through closet that runs the length of our living room.

Unfortunately, we - or rather I - have a lot of stuff. So our storage space is pretty much full to capacity. We've decided to convert the old maintenance closet/storage room, a 4' by 11' space, into a nursery for Gates. It was originally going to be an office for cubes (photo in top left of the collage above). This means that with the exception of part of the shelving system, everything in the "office" needs to move elsewhere. My sewing nook, a 3' by 3' space in the living walk through closet, needs to become dual purpose (photo in bottom right of the collage above).

We also need to baby proof the apartment. A somewhat unstable bookcase needs to find a spot where Gates won't be tempted to climb it. (This task was surprisingly not that hard to achieve once I cleaned out space under the bed. Stacked luggage that sat next to our wardrobe moved under the bed and voila instant space for a bookcase in the bedroom.) An unstable shelving unit in the bathroom also needs to move. You get the idea, right now our apartment looks like a war zone.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll show you the transformation of the old maintenance closet/storage room into a nursery.

Do you have any big projects you're tackling over the holidays?

On the blog this week, I'll post snapshots from our Labor Day weekend road trip (the first of three posts happens this afternoon), share some design tips from 1950s decorating books about nurseries and rooms for children, and reveal two of the vintage party dresses I got for cubes' company's holiday party and our December babymoon.

Ciao Bella!
Eden
 
Credits: All images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for The Road to the Good Life.

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( updated 02/24/2022 ) Welcome! Nice to meet you!   I’m Eden, a fourth-generation Californian. Together my husband, 9.75 year old daughter, and Maine Coon/Ragamuffin rescue cat are in the process of unpacking and nesting in our new 100+ year old Craftsman in Berkeley, CA (until this past December we called a 100-year old, a 847 sq ft Edwardian flat in San Francisco home). We define The Good Life with haves not wants and experiences not things.     What's your story?