Deciding which room would be the baby’s room was not a hard decision for us.  After all, we lived in a 2 bedroom house.  The question was what do we do with the guest bedroom furniture and the office?  The room was already pulling double duty. We decided to get a storage unit for the guest bedroom stuff, but what to do with the office. The office was a necessity as I sometimes work from home. That is when we decided to take on a rather major home renovation.  Our house had a double master floor plan, meaning the 2^nd bedroom was almost as large as our master and had a large walk-in closet. The closet contained its own window.  I decided if we knocked out the wall at the top of our stairs, it would expose that window allowing natural light to flow into a normally dark hallway and provide the perfect space for an office nook.  And, luckily for me, I married a very handy guy who could handle that project. 

The first thing he did was frame out 2 new closets inside the bedroom with an opening in the middle.  He figured if he built the new closets first we were less likely to end up on HGTV’s DIY disasters.  Once they were framed, he took to demoing the wall.  And, wow what a difference it made to let the sun shine in. Finally we had to drywall in the old doorway to the closet.  The whole project took a couple of months and there were only a few bumps in the road. 

The new office space looked great and the space worked perfect.

We had decided to put the crib inside the opening between the 2 closets. So, the last step to the renovation was Chris’s surprise for me.  He ordered fiber optics and created a starry sky, wired to a light switch, so she could sleep under the stars every night.    It was a very cool touch.  By this time, we had found out it was Girl and color and design selection was under way.  I am not a pastel pink kinda girl, so I went will less traditional colors; yellow, blue, red, and brown for the bedding.  We did most of the room yellow with a blue accent wall and we did her bathroom the same shade of blue.  I realize prior to the bedding getting added most people would look at the nursery and assume it was boy based on the colors. 

Her closet had quickly filled with a newborn – 18 month wardrobe.  We had her home from the hospital outfit and even her Christmas dress.  She was going to be a well dressed little girl. 

So when everything changed, and we learned she would never be coming home to her nursery, the question became what do you do with all that stuff?  What do you do with the room? The room that you had dedicated to her. The room you had poured your heart and soul into; making sure every last detail was perfect.

Chris came home the day before I was to be released from the hospital and gathered all the baby stuff (which had spread out all over the house) and put it in the nursery and closed the door.  I took me 3 months after she was gone to even brave opening that door and a full additional month to actually step foot into ‘Ansley’s room.’

It wasn’t long before Chris wanted to turn the room back into the guest bedroom it once was.  To me, that was impossible.  It would always be Ansley’s room.

As time went on, we eventually had house guests again.  And, every time someone slept in Ansley’s room, my heart broke just a little bit more. Reflecting back now, maybe that was one of the reasons we moved away from our first house.