Vintage Baby Crib Repurposed as a Toy Chest

I love vintage decor, especially wood and rusty metal. My husband thinks I have a bit too much of this in our home, but he doesn't get much of a say in the matter. :)  My aesthetic is vintage industrial.

My mom found a lovely vintage wooden crib for me, which I absolutely loved. It has gorgeous lines. Unfortunately the "mattress" was very old, and the paint was chipping showing several colors underneath. As a first-time mom, I'm not completely crazy about things being just right, but in this case I wasn't comfortable actually putting my infant in this to sleep. While it's sturdy, it needed a new mattress and some paint (the paint could have had lead in it for all I know).

With our small, older house, we don't have much room for storage. Since I don't have room for a massive toy chest or other form of organization, I decided to use the crib as a place to store toys. After removing the old mattress, the crib had wooden slats across the bottom.

I sanded and painted every inch of the crib. I used some leftover paint we used to paint our bathroom. My sister would probably tell me that that is not the right paint to use on furniture, but it did the job and it didn't cost me anything. I then added a coat of polyurethane to give it a little shine.

I had my husband cut a piece of plywood to fit the bottom. Originally I was going to paint the plywood grey to match the rest of the crib, but then I started thinking about my daughter Adelaide reaching in to grab toys when she's bigger, and I didn't want her scratching herself somehow. So I purchased some thick foam to put on top, similar to bench cushion. I had some leftover grey chevron fabric I used for our living room curtains, so I decided to use that to cover the foam and plywood base. I used a staple gun and simply wrapped the fabric around and stapled to the back of the plywood.

The plywood "cushion" now sits firmly in the base of the crib and is soft to the touch for our little one.

My husband has lots of electronics in our living room and the cords drive me insane! As someone who loves to decorate her home, I hate seeing cords cluttering everything up. The crib fits conveniently in the corner of our living room now, just above all of the cords, the modem, sub-woofer, etc. So now we have a toy crib, and it hides the eye-soar in the corner.

Remember that you can always repurpose vintage furniture, even if you use it in another way that was not originally intended. Hope this inspires you to start your next project that you've been meaning to start!