The Story of A Room...Part 1

My friend Leesa is expecting her second beautiful baby girl in Septermber. Because her and her hubby make some of the best little human girls in the world, I'm over the moon excited. She's not due until after I will be moved, so we're starting on the nursery pretty early, because of course I want to be a part of that design, like I was for her first daughter, Charlotte's nursery. Plus I can't resist doing some "big girl room" reworking for my girl Charlotte too. Because, Leesa is such a good sport (and I'm working for free), she's letting me share the entire process on the blog (yes, I'm pretty desperate for blog content right now). I've talked about the E-design process before here, but since Leesa is a client turned very, very good friend, we're a little more casual about the whole thing. Casual like, I can drink wine, and tease her about not being able to drink wine while we work.
We've had many a conversation about what she wants this room to be for her new bundle, and these are the basic guidelines:

• No pink
• Bright and fun
• Bohemian vibe (which I'm so excited about...no more "model home decorating" for this gal)
• Needs to work with the architecture of the older home they live in
• Storage, storage, storage

We have very little space. They are not willing to part with their playroom (for good reason), so the small sitting room off of their master bedroom will be baby G's new room. They're adding transom doors, like these (again working with the architecture of the home) to the space so that when she's older and moves in with her big sister, this could be transformed into Leesa's new study/"momcave". There is no closet in this space, so storage will be a must. The room DOES have a large beautiful window, with chunky molding, a tray ceiling (that is just dying for a splash of color) and beautiful wood floors that flow from the master.

From here we both starting collecting images/ideas to create an inspiration board (not to be confused with my pinterest board for her here) and here's what I came up with:

The center picture is the feeling I'm going for....collected over time, vintage, but with some bright colors thrown in. I'm dying to leave the walls bright white (Leesa is taking some convincing, but I'll get her there like I always do). The tray ceiling, will be painted a bright turquoise blue (not quite the color in the above ceiling picture) that I will pull from that gorgeous green rug. Since storage is such an issue (no closet since it's not a traditional bedroom) I thought the Hemnes system (anchored to the wall so sister Charlotte doesn't get hurt when she inevitably tries to climb it) would be great for the nursery, but also afterwards for her in a study. Adding gold hardware and molding around it, will hopefully give it the affect of being built in....again matching the architecture of their vintage home. I've been dying over these acrylic bookshelves (bought from here, so they are also super cheap) and I love that they let the beautiful covers of all of the baby's new books be the art in the room. I'm hoping to find a vintage dresser, possibly one we could leave with the natural wood or paint a bright fun color to use as a changing table (with the proper lipped changing pad attachment of course...no rolling babies here) and for even more storage. The gold side table will sit next to the rocker and I'm hoping to DIY a vintage style Love sign like the one above, or maybe just find the letters in an antique store. I would love to find a vintage chandelier/light, I've been hitting up Habitat Restore/Goodwill and praying for a miraculous hidden treasure that they didn't know they had in our tight budget, but haven't found one yet, so I may have to go with this one by YoungHouseLove, it's really great (I have many plans for this fixture in our new house) and a fantastic price. I've found tons of textiles on Etsy I'm dying to use and am still contemplating window treatments. 

This is where we are now. 
I will be on vacation next week, but I'm excited to create an official mood board with some finalized design decisions to share with you guys in the next couple weeks.

So what's your process when you're designing a new space?