A heater for the nursery (and other functional items)

So, it seems I’ve had a draft of this blog post saved for 10 months. I started reading it and realized I had more to say, so I decided to fix it up and get it out!

Beatrice’s room is COLD. Realllllly cold. As discussed here, the room is sort of an uninsulated afterthought added to the back of our apartment. There’s a wimpy heater vent underneath the changing table that is completely ineffective.

See it to the left?

Last winter, we installed a wall panel heater (we got this one, a Cozy-Heater). I knew we needed a flat wall heater because we have absolutely no floor or surface space to spare in the room. However, while I guess this heater worked well enough to prevent Beatrice from getting frostbite, I don’t think it did much more than that. I would shiver every time I went into her room to feed her in the middle of the night, and this heater also emitted a terrible chemical smell whenever I turned it on after a few days off. I worked so hard to have the nursery be chemical-free, and this slab of uselessness probably undid it all.

At the end of last summer, I emailed Amazon in a last-ditch effort to see if I could get a refund for the heater we had purchased, errrrrrrr, 10 months before? Not surprisingly, my request resulted in a big fat NO. I started researching alternate solutions. I had heard some success stories about Econo-Heat and was thinking of trying that. I reallllllly hate wasting money, and I was dragging my feet about making another purchase that could be a terrible flop.

Before submitting my Econo-Heat order, I decided to try one more thing. I emailed Cozy-Heater directly to explain the problems I was having and why I had waited so long to complain. They emailed right back, told me they had changed their design, and offered to send us a replacement 400W panel heater free of charge! I knew there was a chance the new heater could be the same flop, but for free, I decided it was worth a try.

Incidentally, the brand now goes by the name Amaze-heater. Big changes here. Big changes.

The footprint of the new heater is slightly larger, which makes sense because this is the 400-watt version versus the 250-watt we had before. More importantly, though, the chemical smell is a thing of the past! I haven’t noticed it since the first day or two of using the heater.

Supposedly, we could paint the heater to match the wall, but I really just haven’t wanted to deal with that and don’t mind the big white square all that much.

In terms of effectiveness, I can’t give an accurate comparison because this winter has been much more mild than last. Last year, we also shrink-wrapped the window for better insulation, and we haven’t needed to do that yet this winter (and may not need to at all??). And gone are the days when I would spend hours each night shivering while rocking and nursing Beatrice in the glider. Now, I just bring her straight into bed with us when she wakes to nurse because I have to get up way too early in the morning to wage a midnight crib battle. All disclaimers aside, I do think this heater gives off slightly more heat than the old one, and it is working for us so far in conjunction with this awesome cozy Yerdled sleep sack :-).

A few other items of note …

My mom found the embroidered lamp shade on one of her many bargain-shopping excursions, and it quickly landed on its perch atop the wall sconce.

We hung that wooden fishy coat rack (local yard sale find!) on the back of the door for cute baby hooded towels and sweaters. Beatrice doesn’t really need her own towels, but who can resist bebe elefante?!

I listed the components of our closet in my renovation post, and I have since filled it with all of these sweet and girly dresses that were mine when I was a baby.

I turned down the dresses when my mom first tried to get me to take them because I did not want to force Beatrice into being a girly girl. But then I accepted that one of the perks of having a daughter is that I can surround her with special, pretty things that used to be mine … until she tells me to stop!

My favorite contraption is nestled under the closet.

I bought this wall-mount expandable drying rack so that we would have a place to air out Beatrice’s wool diaper covers between uses. You can see the rack extended and in action in the closet photo above. The rack came with an extra set of mounts which I installed underneath the changing table so that, if need be, I can slide the rack on there for extra drying power (you know, from the slow trickle of cool air coming out of the heating vent).

The little pull-out toy drawer is the Ikea TRONES shoe cabinet.

I got the idea for the wood top from Pinterest so the drawers would look less like slabs of plastic. We just gave our measurements to the guys in the lumberyard at Ace Hardware, and they cut the boards to size. We stained them and laid them right on top.

The other two cabinets are in the little “vestibule” hall area right outside Bea’s room. They are AWESOME for narrow spaces.

So anyway, that just about does it on the nursery until we need to convert Bea’s crib into a toddler bed. Thankfully, she hasn’t started climbing out of it yet, but I think it is only a matter of time since she climbs everything else now, including up onto our bed when she refuses the crib.