For my money, the best part of pregnancy, besides viewing the ultrasounds, was setting up a baby nursery on a budget. It combined my love for my daughter and personal finance. Plus, outside of actually getting your wife pregnant, nothing made me feel more like a man during the process than putting together the one room that is virtually guaranteed to make my daughter feel safe.
Once my wife and I found out the sex of the baby, we were eager to purchase the items we needed for the nursery and to begin planning how it would look.
The article represents our ultimate guide to setting up a baby nursery on a budget. As always, if you’re unsure of your money situation, then I encourage you to read this article on personal finance to make sure you get the most out of every dollar!
Side note: I am not including the new flooring and trim we installed. When we originally purchased the house, the carpeting needed to be replaced and we’re not huge fans of carpet, so we chose to DIY install laminate flooring. I replaced the baseboards, door and window trim in every room in the house. We knew we ideally wanted hard floors in the nursery to make cleaning up the shit, piss and, in general, bodily fluids easier, but that is certainly something we could’ve and certainly would’ve skipped if resources were an issue.
Starting The Job
I left the painting and overall design to my wife. All I cared about was that the room was feminine because we’re having a daughter. Yeah, I’m traditional. We were having a girl and I wanted her to have a girls room. Period. She picked the paint, bought some flowered wall stickers, photo frames and pictures to put into them. My sister-in-law and mom helped my wife paint the room and set up the stickers, while my grandmother in her 80s helped ‘supervise’.
Once the paint color was decided, I purchased a blackout shade. We have these in the master bedroom and I knew they would be helpful to ensure darkness in the room—particularly for naps and early night bedtimes when it was still light. You could certainly just buy blackout curtains, but we have had a good experience with these particular shades and didn’t want to hide our fantastic-looking window trim. And yes, using power tools to cut and install trim also increases the ole’ testosterone factor.
After that, I installed one of our many Blink cameras. I have used Blink for nearly five years now, and highly recommend them. We wanted one for the nursery so that my wife and I could check-in from time-to-time if one of us was ever out of the house and just wanted to look at her. I purchased two cord hiders for the camera cord and the light cord.
Finally, before worrying about the furniture, we purchased some puzzle piece mats. They’re good for footing, easy to clean, and we will ultimately be able to put her on the floor when she walks/crawls.
Setting Up A Baby Nursery On A Budget Without Being Cheap
In desiring to stick to our plan, we put a lot of research into the furniture we would be purchasing. In the midst of that, I stumbled upon an incredible website, deltachildren.com, that made ordering the bulk of the furniture and mattress items easier and about 33% cheaper.
If we had purchased the crib, mattress, mattress covers, sheets, chair, dresser and bassinet separately we would have paid over $1,500 after tax. But after combining them, we paid less than $1,000. Score!
We waited until we were about five months in before I let my wife start opening things. I am not overly superstitious, and I apologize for the double negative, but I am not not superstitious. I eventually relented and we had the furniture from Delta Children installed several months before birth.
Tip: I encourage everyone to install their own nursery furniture, if possible. It is really the first step in the ultimate guide to setting up a baby nursery on a budget. That’s because it costs so much for someone to install the items. Plus, it was an experience I am glad I had, even if I did swear a few dozen times during the installation.
Utilize That Space
After installation and placement, we had some space left over and wanted additional storage. We purchased a nightstand that sits beside the crib. That holds up our daughter’s Hatch (another incredible purchases), and gave us the storage we wanted to hide away a number of things—mainly burp cloths, towels, etc.
We had a little more space between the dresser (we have a changing mat on top of a dresser because we want to use it later) and chair, so we purchased an end table with a built-in USB charging station. That allows phones and other devices, including the baby wipe warmer we were gifted, to charge.
The Diaper Genie was a gift at her baby shower, and I can’t recommend that enough. I thought it was pointless, bullshit purchase when I first laid eyes on it. After all, the smell of shit is eternal. But nearly four months later I can say that it really masks the smell of things you want masked and makes for a nice transition from the nursery to the outside garbage can.
The last piece we added to the nursery was an art piece from Etsy that has her name and the definition of it. That is not in this picture because we weren’t announcing her name until birth and the pictures of the nursery were shared with a lot of people.
Tip: how to do you put together a baby nursery on a budget? Stick to the budget! There’s a lot of cool and cute shit that you’ll want to buy and it adds up so, so, so quickly.
The Total Cost Of The Nursery
Here is the list of purchases we made to create the room shown in the pictures above that was the inspiration for the ultimate guide to setting up a baby nursery on a budget:
Crib, mattress, two mattress covers, two sets of sheets, chair, dresser, bassinet- $992
Endtable with built in charging station- $60.00
Nightstand– $94.50
Blackout shade– $162
Paint- ~$80
Wall stickers– $25 all together
Picture frames- $25
Diaper Genie– $40 (received as gift)
Puzzle mats– $30
Etsy art with our daughter’s name (not pictured)- $100
Blink cameras– $70
Cord hiders– $14
TOTAL: $1,693
TOTAL (without bundling): $2,199
