This nursery Dave and Carrie created for their daughter made us smile the moment we saw the first photo. Bold, playful and filled with personal touches, the room also showcases a lot of handmade, DIY work. Here’s their letter about the project:
Hey S & J—We recently welcomed our first child, Everly Harper. Before we even knew Ever (that’s what we’ll lovingly call her), we knew we didn’t want a typical nursery — and we definitely didn’t want anything like the room looked when we bought the place.
My wife was inspired by a woodland-themed nursery we found on your site years ago, and this is what we came up with. We wanted to save money where we could, and we both love a good project, so we tackled as much as possible ourselves over the last few months.
We started by painting the walls with Behr Ultra Premium Plus Flat Enamel, color-matched to Sherwin-Williams Grizzle Gray, then hand-painted the birch trees using leftover trim paint matched to Sherwin-Williams Extra White. To hide the dated half-hardwood, half-painted subfloor we installed carpet tiles and layered a white shag area rug from Target. The curtains and hardware are from Ikea, but we hand-painted yellow stripes (Behr Yellow Gold) on the panels because we couldn’t find affordable yellow curtains we loved.
The changing table is actually a vintage dresser we found on Craigslist. We sanded it, stained, painted and applied polyurethane. We attached a Pottery Barn Kids changing pad frame and insert that can be removed later so the dresser will grow with Everly. The crib is a new piece from Walmart.
The canvas on the wall is vinyl printed with our birth-announcement photo. I built a frame from leftover lumber and stretched the vinyl like a canvas. The print was made by a local company, and the photo came from a “Trash the Dress” shoot we did with our favorite photographer. We actually discovered we were expecting a few weeks before that shoot, so Erin incorporated pregnancy-announcement shots into our session. Those boots in the photo were the first thing we bought for the baby.
The Hunter boots are now part of the décor until Everly can make a little mud of her own. Most accessories were collected over the last ten months — a fox and mushrooms from Target, a fabric-wrapped tree from Anthropologie, and a diaper pail from Ikea.
Thanks for inspiring us every day, and thanks for letting us share our room with you. We hope Ever knows how much love went into it! Best regards, Dave & Carrie
We admire not only the room’s appearance but also the thought and effort behind every detail. Everly is a lucky little girl. If you’d like to see more, Dave and Carrie have a photo album that shows additional corners of this colorful woodland nursery. Thanks for sharing, Dave and Carrie!