When I started thinking about what furniture I needed to make life easy once the baby was here, my top priority was to keep it simple especially since we weren't going to have a separate nursery space at least for the first few months.
To start off, I didn't have a long list of furniture I needed to invest in immediately, I decided I wanted to take it step by step, testing and trying out what might and might not work for the baby.
But one thing I knew for sure is that I needed a changing station. Every one knows that diaper changing is an activity of its own in a new born's routine. Since it was something that was going to happen multiple times a day, I decided that it is something that needed to be comfortable, easy and efficient.
I had a choice between getting the traditional changing table with open racks or a dresser with a changing table topper. I knew I did not like the open rack option because it had limited storage and I wanted to store all baby items in this unit if possible, open racks also mean keeping it clean all the time for sanity sake and I wasn't sure how possible that was going to be initially.
The dresser seemed like a better option but it also meant taking up a ton of space in our bedroom. This is when I decided I wanted to create my own unit to suit our needs.
So my key word approaching this project turned out to be 'minimalism' which of course led me to my second key word 'Re-purpose'. I decided to take something I already had and was no longer going to use and re-purpose it into something that I definitely needed.
Every crafter/artist knows about the IKEA Alex drawer unit. It's the perfect storage unit for crafters to store away those little knick-knacks and access it easily. Below is an image of what the alex drawer unit looks like.
I then went ahead and bought two of these Alex drawer units. The space I had in mind for a changing table in our bedroom was 48 inches in length, between two doors. One of these units were 14 inches long which meant two of it came up to 28 inches in length, which left me with 20 inches. I decided I was going to get a wood slab 48 inches long (you can find this at any home improvement store) to go on the top pushing both the drawer units to either end and creating a void space in between, this could be used to hold the baby's laundry bin, a mini diaper genie or any other extras that I might need along the way.
Next challenge was to tackle the height. The height of a standard changing table was about 34 inches for comfort sake, once we put the table top onto the unit the height measured up to 30 inches. The changing topper itself was another 3 inches so I decided to hold off on adding legs or doing any other hack to increase the height. I decided I would know if the height wasn't right once we changed a couple of diapers and that could be a project for another time if the need arises.
It also created some space beneath the unit which was perfect for the laundry hamper. On the unit itself, next to the changing topper I put some baby essentials like some baby lotion, diaper rash creams, diapers and wipes for ease of grabbing them quick instead of having to go anywhere else for it, for this I used a diaper caddy organizer to keep them all together, this is available on amazon, links to all products used for this project is listed below.
Here is what the final product looked like.
What I ended up loving about this is that I had the freedom to custom create a unit to suit our needs and at the same time know it's something I would absolutely enjoy using as my work table once we have no need for it.
For this room, since we wanted to keep it minimal, I ended up using very few products.
Here is a list of links to all the products I used to create this diaper changing unit:
I have to mention how almost every single thing used to create this project was gifted to us by our awesome friends and family! Let me know in the comments below about what you think about this transformation, I would also love to see your diaper changing station ideas and projects!