Furniture Selection

Picking out furniture that both Ian and I liked for baby girl was pretty easy.  We walked around and pretty much agreed right away whether we liked something.  The hard part was finding furniture we like that also has a good rating for durability, safety, and quality.  We were cautious with cribs made from China as many cribs have been recalled that were made there from lead in the paint used on the crib, or parts used that weren't quite up to standards.

With most other products, I was okay going with something that wasn't top of the line, but rather was somewhere in the middle.  But with the furniture, I wasn't willing to compromise on it.

A few things we wanted:

1. Convertible crib.  This style of crib normally will convert to a toddler or twin bed, and some even go to a full bed eventually.  Our plan is for this furniture we buy to continue and last our daughter through the next 5-10 years. 
2. Dresser instead of a changing table.  While the changing tables tend to be much less expensive, we can't convert it into something else once she's not in diapers.  For us, we wanted a dresser to use as a changing table that can later be just a dresser for her room.
3. Durable.  We wanted something sturdy that didn't look like it would scratch or chip easily.  We are realistic in that kids are messy and things break easily with kids.  Let's face it, for how small they are they can cause some serious destruction.  We looked at all kinds of cribs, but ultimately felt that some of the cribs felt more flimsy than others.  And especially with us wanting this furniture to last the next 5-10 years for her, durability was super important to us.

We looked everywhere for cribs: online on dozens of websites, in person at Target, Buy Buy Baby.  We looked at reviews and recommendations from parents.  We looked at blogs.  I asked friends what kind of furniture they got.

We finally narrowed it down to two collections made by the same company: Westwood Design.  For quality and safety, it gets an "A".  The collections are expensive, but everything we read about the company is that the price is worth it for the quality and safety.  The furniture looks beautiful in person, and feels so freaking sturdy.  The safety standards this company goes by are above and beyond what they are required to do.  They randomly test the furniture to confirm that none of the finishes or any of the parts have toxins, lead, phthalates.  Also, they are JPMA certified.

One of the collections, Lily, is sold through JCPenney.  We were looking at the chocolate mist finish.  On sale, this collection ends up being about $300 less than the the other collection (listed below).  But once we looked into shipping it either to the store or to us, that $300 worth of savings went down the tube.  In fact, shipping charges were $304.  Yowsers.  Also, a downside of buying through JCPenney is that none of the stores have the furniture in store to look at.  What if we got it all here and hated that little design on the crib?  Seems like a lot of hassle.

So if you haven't guessed yet, we opted not to go with the Lily collection.  Instead, we decided to go with the Brookline collection, which we bought through Buy Buy Baby.  BBB already has the crib and dresser in stock, and will ship it to us for $65 and unpack all of it in the room. Also, since we're already registered at BBB, we can add the additional pieces we are interested in onto the registry.  This way, either we'll be so fortunate as to receive one of the pieces as a gift, can use gift cards we might get towards it, or at least get a discount on the items so that we can buy them.  We went ahead and purchased the crib and dresser and they should arrive in the next week!  Here it is:

Ian asked that they do not put together the crib so that he can do it.  So within the next week or so, Ian will be taking down everything in the guest room and we'll begin to transform it into the nursery.  I can't wait!