Graham and Harrison’s Shared Toddler Room

Hey friends, it has been a while since I’ve posted. A new school year brings a busy schedule and we are slowly getting in the groove and remembering how to balance everything. Graham and Harrison’s shared toddler room is finally at a point where it is nearly finished and I’m so excited to share it with you guys. This project was one we have taken our sweet little time on over several months. Our hope was to create a space that we can add to over time as the boys grow. We are so thankful for extra space in our home that allowed Graham to stay in his room until we got this one close to complete. Graham transitioned from his crib to this room at the beginning of this past summer and we plan to switch Harrison over when he’s ready.

When we envisioned the boys toddler room, shiplap was top priority on my list. I wanted it to be a white and neutral space with lots of texture. It’s important to me that our spaces have the ability for color to be added and taken away or changed for different seasons etc. Here’s what the room looked like before we moved in. This is a picture from our home listing. After moving in, this quickly became the room we moved things to that we couldn’t find a home for…then it became my craft room when I started my Etsy shop. Ultimately, we knew this was the best room in the house for the boys because it’s the farthest from our bedroom and we won’t wake them up when we are getting ready in the morning. Sean spent a few weekends adding shiplap to two walls and changing out the builder baseboards and trim for something with a little more of a farmhouse flair. Sean and I fell in love with all things shiplap in our previous house and did our first shiplap accent wall in our old master bedroom. We loved everything about it minus the hefty price tag. When we realized we could rip down inexpensive underlayment boards for a fraction of the cost and the same effect, we were ecstatic. It was the perfect solution for this room since we were wanting to cover two large surface areas and it would have killed our budget if we went with traditional shiplap. Sean ripped down sheets of MDF to create the door trim, window trim and baseboards. After applying wood putty, sanding and caulking, we painted the entire room Benjamin Moore Simply White and the doors got a coat of Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron. We have a lot of white in our house and the darks doors throughout are a fun touch. We looked around for several weeks trying to decide on beds for our little guys. It was a tough decision between toddler beds and twin. Ultimately, we decided on toddler beds since they were both transitioning from cribs and we felt like the smaller size might make the transition easier. We finally settled on these cute little beds and couldn’t be happier with the color, size and quality. They’re just what we needed for this stage. I was so excited when I saw these gray buffalo check sheets by Burt’s Bees. The white duvets keep things simple and make it so easy for me to change up color palettes. I’m already getting excited envisioning their space decorated for Christmas. Sean built the sweetest little book shelves from a few 1X4’s and 1X6’s and created this farmhouse sign for under $40. We grabbed this vintage cage light from a fun little antique store in McKinney, Texas and it’s perfect with our favorite LED Edison bulbs. Sean also installed 4 dimmable recessed LED’s. Lighting is so important to us and you can tell how poorly lit this room was in the shiplap installation pictures. Sean and I laugh all the time about the lighting in our house when we moved in. Most of our lights had fluorescent bulbs and it would take almost 10 minutes for the room to actually light up. We used to joke that we needed 10 minutes notice for guests to come over so we had time to turn the lights on.

One of the most important things about this room was safety. Our boys are adventurous in nature and our hope was to limit anything that could become a safety or tipping hazard. Here’s a little proof that even a squishy Pottery Barn Kids anywhere chair is fun to tip for these two. Thankfully, this bedroom has a large closet and eliminated the need for any type of dresser. If you missed their closet remodel, here it is. Their beds are low to the floor and we tried to steer clear of anything that could be used to climb. We installed this window lock since this is an upstairs bedroom. These door locks are on many doors throughout our house and we installed one on the closet door since there are cubbies that are appealing to climb. Sean installed this camera as part of our home security system and we love that we can see any activity on our bedroom TV throughout the night.

Graham has been in this room for the past few months now and loves it. He talks about his “big boy room” all the time and enjoys spending time in it. It has been a fun spot for playing and reading and we can’t wait until Harrison shows signs that he’s ready for the big transition and they can share this space.