Which room for baby?

[reetgood]

First child, we have a small 3 bed semi. It has the classic two double rooms and one box room.

Obv baby will be in with us for first 6 months but I'm thinking it will be easier to designate a room now rather than being sleep deprived and trying to move rooms around.

Currently box room is my office and sewing room. It has built in shelves with a slightly weird configuration to accommodate stair bulk head. Was previously a cabin bed before we remodelled. It's a nice room. I could see a cot or toddler bed fitting in here quite nicely, and could figure out some additional storage. There's a laundry maid for drying things. Disadvantage, smallest room, not loads of floor space, once becomes toddler the built in could worryingly look like good climbing frame...

Spare room has sofa bed for guests, and my boyfriend's office space. It also functions most often as where the laundry dries in bad weather/winter. Nice sized room, but we'd lose our guest room (and where would laundry go! ;) ). Boyfriend really likes having a space to offer friends and family. I feel faint of heart at doing stuff rationalisation ;)

One thought I had was little room when kid is small and big room when gets grown up bed? Not sure about 2nd, will see how I feel and how it pans out conception wise (I'm 37).

Also: how do we baby proof our house, particularly the staircase? It's open to the living room, and has very open banisters... I assume I don't need to worry about this until later and baby is mobile.

Would there be space to keep the sofa bed in the larger room alongside a cot/toddler bed? Then on the occasions when you have guests, they can go in there whilst little one temporarily moves into your room/box room whilst they stay?
That's our plan for our second room once our toddler moves in there to make way in the smallest room for number 2!

Might save you having to rearrange two rooms!

Don't worry about the staircase yet - until baby is on the move not really an issue. Not sure about the sides, but look into stairgates for top and bottom - which one depends on how wide the gap is. We had to chop a bit out of ours so it could open around the bannister!
One thing I would advise - don't get a self-closing baby gate. Sounded like a great idea - it's incredibly frustrating though when baby's not about and you're trying to nip quickly in and out...

PS - also handy to have somewhere for you to sleep in baby's room when they're ill/unsettled, so keeping sofa bed in larger room could be helpful for that too!

We're in exactly the same position. We've cleared the box room for now and if/when we have another we'll move baby number 1 into the bigger room. We don't want to lose the guest room yet although I know we will at some point. Babies don't need much room (even though their stuff does) so they'll be fine in the little room for now.

We have a similar house - the smallest room is the man cave/DVD room and the other was a guest room. The baby got the second room for the main reason that the baby lives there now. I also dreaded the thought of finding a home for all the books and dvds we have. If anyone comes to stay or babysit overnight, it's the sofa or an air bed. People will understand if you no longer have space for them to stay overnight.

We baby proofed the house by seeing what our friends' children got in about when they came to see the new baby and then moved it all.

We also have a 3 bed semi with two double rooms and a smaller one. BR2 was the guest room but we've turned it into baby's room, we have space for a single bed in there as well as the cot. It's one of those guest beds that is a single with a bed underneath so it can be converted into a double. BR3 is DH's office as he works from home.

We used to hang laundry to dry in BR2 but we got this for the bathroom (have it above the bath) plus a very efficient extractor fan. Now we dry clothes in there if they can't go in the tumble drier.

I suggest you make BR2 baby's room and put a guest bed or sofa bed in there if it fits, although tbh it's good to have an excuse not to have overnight guests when you have a newborn

Alternatively you could get a sofa bed for the living room, although it would need to be comfy as a sofa too!

Would you and your partner be able to share BR3 as an office / sewing room or will you need to use it at the same time? You might need to create a small office / sewing space in another room e.g. BR1 or a room downstairs.

Thanks for ideas - don't know why I hadn't thought of keeping sofa bed in slightly bigger room.

Neither of us need office full time - I mostly used mine for sewing (although not much of that past 6 months) and his is lots of books and recording equipment, again not used regularly. This could mean I bump up the house reno budget as there's definitely a book storage solution, it just means addressing the half built under stairs. Possibility of half desk there too. This is the books after two rounds of purging.. I've already mentally scheduled in new flooring as thought of small crawling child and existing floors is not appealing (always in the plan, bought house 2 years ago and it needed a fair amount of work. We've done half of that, have the cash ready for floors but just stalling on floors as it's throughout and again, big job.)

We did lots of small jobs and decorating after I found out I was pregnant - turns out we needed a deadline to get it done!

We were having the same debate. We have our room, my dressing room with all my clothes and desk in and my boyfriend's box Xbox room.

Me and dp have decided to share the middle room and put the baby in the box room. Its sacrifices and a lot of rearranging

We have decided to give baby the other double room as I'm sure I'll be spending quite a bit of time in their at night feeding or soothing baby and there wouldn't be space comfortably to do that in the small room. It also means no change or transition for the child later on if/when we have another.

Rather than a sofa bed I'll put a comfortable reclining rocking chair in there I think.

Our new house is similar, small room will be gaming room and other large room will be babies room. I was reading about the stairs the other day, you can buy a clear plastic thing online but it looks a bit crap, other option is like a plastic netting, also looks crap but probably the option I'll be going for! There's a few diy ideas online!

We were in the same boat we gave first child box room decorated it in blue and yellow and kept double bed in 2nd largest room. Then when we had another child 13 months later just before she was born we moved DS into 2nd largest room redecorated this more toddler boyish than baby and moved DD into box room. When DD was 4/5 we extended the box room. Once this was done we got them to keep most of there toys upstairs most of the time although this only works then they are older.
When your child comes along you may need find you both have less of a need want for yourselves as kids kind of take over your house and lives with them and there clutter.
If you want a guest room keep it but you may not want guests as much.

Yes I hadn't thought about amount of time there might need to be us in the room too...

@brighteyes27 honestly that just makes me all the more desiring of an 'our' room! Perhaps it's learned behaviour: my parents room was always off limits to us, and when we moved into a larger house they had a separate room that was their office/ projects room. I would creep in there as much as I could, but it always had the definite feel of being 'their' space. We definitely took over the rest of the house!

My parents never did that if we had a four bedded house now I would definitely have one but with two older kids of different sexes our own wishes needs/came last.

Our house has a similar layout and the baby is getting the box room! We live a long way from family and a lot of our friends, and there is no way I could give up having a guest room!

We also have 3 beds. The spare double bedroom has full (expensive) built in wardrobes that were already fitted when we moved in which are fully of DH's clothes (he has more than me!). He wasn't up for giving up his clothing space so we have set up nursery in the smaller room which was an office / dumping ground. The room will fit a single bed so figure DS will be fine in there for a good few years

Similar situation. I definitely want space for visitors (I like our friends & family!) but am tempted to give baby the bigger room so it can also be a playroom and help save our sitting room from becoming that. So difficult to decide

I'm pretty sure most people like their friends and family!

It can just be hard work to have overnight guests in the early days, unless they help out (with cooking, washing up, etc)