A Mother's Surprise Nursery

The following article by L.D. Wiegler originally ran

in Homeclick.

An office-cum-guest room gets a surprise makeover for an expecting mother.

With its charming stuffed lion guarding the crib, this colorful sweetspot is the kind of room any baby would be lucky to have. So it’s not surprising that self-employed Wisc.-based interior designer Anna Janke of Peridot Design Group won a 2009-2010 ASID award for remodeling the former office-cum-guest room.

Coined the “surprise nursery,” its details dazzled judges in the category of Residential/Unique-Custom: a window featuring an arch of louvers on top and bio-fold doors at the bottom, which may be tilted open or shut tight for light control; wooden educational stacking cards; a display shelf boasting picture books and toys that can be replaced with chapter books or trophies as baby grows.

The designer says this was one of her all-time favorite projects, a real joy to work with the husband—who knew the sex of the baby even though his wife did not—in creating a tailor made boy-specific oasis.

“This is the third bedroom that had been an office,” Janke says of the couple that already had a boy and a girl when the Mrs. became pregnant. “When the third baby was due the husband called and said, ‘we want to do this as a surprise’. I think he knew it was a boy, but they let the wife be surprised.”

A budget was given, Janke presented a floor to the wife, who made decisions without knowing what the (boy) color scheme or patterns would be. “So I drew up floor plans but they were very black and white,” Janke says.

Interesting twists to the dazzling room include a convertible bed from Bonavita’s Hudson collection, and wallpaper alphabet squares and decals are removable. So as baby learns his ABCs, he can swap them up for whole words, toys or whatever his family fancies.

Cleverly, Janke had cut up a wallpaper border to produce the alphabetical letters. Instead of installing the letters horizontally, Janke went with a jumbled-angle pattern to frame the window.

Adding spice to the space, Janke juxtaposed styles and designs. “I’m a big fan of not doing one specific theme,” she explains. “[Such as] not doing all Disney or all trucks, and using color to kind of anchor the theme, while also mixing it up.”

All of this hard work was done out of the mother’s view, with Janke’s team painting and the husband assembling furniture. “If I remember, he called me when they went to the hospital and I went in with my installer and put all the finishing touches on the room—hung artwork, made the bed and placed the toys and books.’

So what did the wife think?

"Well, I was on pins and needles waiting for her and the baby to see it,” says Janke, who also had redesigned a kids’ bathroom at the home. “She contacted me and said she loved it.” PHOTOS: Paul Gaertner, White Dog Photography www.whitedogphotography.com