A tale of two rooms

We moved Torsten's office down to the basement. Now, the only stuff that is left in the bedroom upstairs that was his office is a giant pile of junk that he needs to remove.

So, now is the prime time for painting the nursery. Except, now we've been struck with another question: which is the best room for the nursery?

We have three spare bedrooms upstairs. One is my office, and will stay that way. One of the others is currently the guest room, and the third, Torsten's former office, is standing empty.

Originally we were planning to make the third room the nursery. That's the one I posted about before, with the chair rail. Let's look at it again, to refresh our memories.

From the doorway:


View of the nook, closet, and doorway:


View from the nook:


View of the closet:


This room is by far the smallest room in the house (that rug is 8'x5', if that helps with scale). It is the only bedroom with chair rail. It has a walk-in closet that is smaller than the other walk-in closets, but still sizable. It also has a nook that looks like it was a regular closet with the sliding doors removed. It faces the street, and has one double window. It is down the hall and around the corner from our bedroom.

Now, let's look at the current guest room.

View from the doorway:


View of the closet and doorway:


View of the closet:


This room is significantly larger than the other room (for scale, note that the bed is queen size). It is in the corner of the house, with a double window facing the back yard and a single window facing the side yard and neighboring house. It has a large walk-in closet. It is directly down the hall from our room (the doors of the two rooms face each other from opposite ends of the hall). It does not have chair rail.

So, here are the considerations we've come up with relating to the two rooms:

• The guest bed is already in the guest room, and it would be a pain to move it, as it is heavy, solid wood, and we would have to take it apart. (However, Torsten says he watched the guys put it together and knows how to do it, and it would not be difficult.)
• The guest bed has a big headboard. We wanted this, as it allows bed occupants to sit up and lean back to read without crushing their spines against the window frame. However, it is so big that it blocks half the window. If we moved it to the other room, it could be placed against the wall that has no window, thus eliminating this problem.
• The bed is fairly big, and the other room is fairly small. The bed would definitely dominate the smaller room.
• Because the other room is so small, and because of the window, the nook, the closet, and the doorway, configurations for that room are extremely limited. In fact, it is the type of room that is really better off just having one main piece of furniture in it, such as a desk or a bed. It is sort of naturally inclined to be a guest room.
• It would be very hard to configure a nursery in that room. The only place for the crib would be against the one wall that has no windows and dorms. The changing table would pretty much have to go in that nook. And as for other things like chairs and shelves, I still don't really know where they would go. This would definitely require some creative finagling.
• The smaller room has the chair rail, which would allow for the two-tone turquoise paint job we were planning to do.
• The chair rail and nook also mean that the paint job will be more complex (though this seems like a minor consideration, since that only causes extra work for a single weekend and then it will be done).
• Because the other room does not have chair rail and would therefore be painted only one shade, it opens up the possibility of doing some sort of cool stenciling on the wall instead of the two-tone thing (as an aside, if anyone has any stenciling ideas/suggestions, I'd love to hear them).
• The size and layout of the other room mean that it would be very flexible as far as layout is concerned. It would also translate well to an older kid's room. The smaller room would severely limit the possibility that an older child could, say, have a second bed in the room for friends, siblings, etc. Or set up a desk or a bunch of shelves or anything else, really, beyond the basics. So, if we made that room the nursery, we would likely end up eventually moving the kid into one of the other bedrooms.
• The bigger room is big enough that the baby furniture could end up looking lost in there. I'm not sure about this. I'd have to see how it all looked at the end. But people seem to tend to use smaller rooms as nurseries? Is this just because they seem cozier? Is there some sort of reason for this that I haven't thought of?
  
• The smaller room faces the street, and can easily be seen into by people on the street at night. I'd prefer a more private room to do things like breastfeed in. On the other hand, I'm sure our guests would prefer some privacy as well. (At the moment, our blinds are totally see-through, as you can see in the photos--that's as closed as they get.) One way or the other, I think we're going to have to get better blinds for that room, so this is probably a moot point.

I don't know what to doooooooo. We are leaning toward moving the guest bed and using the bigger room as the nursery (can you tell that from the above list?) but we're not sure. We'd like to start painting soon, though, so we have to make a decision. What do you think? Which room would make a better nursery? And which room would make a better guest room? And if the answer to both those questions is the same room, what other considerations should be taken into account?