Property CareHome › The Nursery
Ready before they are.
A room to bring someone home to, and a house that is safe to let them loose in eighteen months later. Two jobs, really, and both are far easier done calmly in advance than urgently afterwards. We prepare the room properly, finish early enough that it has aired and settled, and come back when crawling starts to make the rest of the house sensible.
A nursery is a room you will use half asleep
Most nursery advice is about colour schemes. Almost none of it is about the things you will notice when you are exhausted and doing this for the hundredth time. That is the room we build.
One thing worth saying plainly, because it changes what the room is for at first. NHS and Lullaby Trust guidance is that a baby sleeps in their own cot or Moses basket in the same room as you, for every sleep, day and night, for at least the first six months. So for that first half year the nursery is a changing room, a dressing room, a store and a calm place to sit and feed. It becomes the bedroom afterwards. We build it to do both, because you only want to decorate it once.
- The fabric checked first: draughts, a cold external wall, a radiator that never quite worked, so the room can hold a steady 16 to 20 degrees
- Walls properly prepared, then painted in low-odour paint, early enough to air completely
- Blackout that genuinely blacks out, fitted to stop the light at the edges rather than only the middle
- A feeding corner that works from day one: room for the chair, a lamp reachable without standing up, a shelf within arm's reach
- A socket where you actually need one, so nothing trails across the floor in the dark
- Lighting on a dimmer, plus a low light for a three in the morning nappy change, and for the night feeds that come later
- Storage built to the room: alcove wardrobes, shelving, drawers that close quietly
- Changing surface set at a height that will not wreck your back over a thousand repetitions
- Flat-pack furniture assembled properly, squarely, and anchored to the wall
- The squeaking floorboard found and silenced, and the creaking door hinge eased
- A door that closes softly instead of announcing every exit
- Baby monitor and any cabling routed out of sight and well away from the cot
Then the day they start moving
A newborn stays where you put them. That lasts about six months, and then the house has to change. We come back and do it in an afternoon, so you are not fitting stair gates one-handed with a toddler on your hip.
- Stair gates fitted properly: screw-fitted at the top of the stairs, always, anchored into something that will hold
- Gates on doorways, hallways and the kitchen, fitted square so they actually latch
- Bookcases, chests of drawers, wardrobes and televisions anchored so nothing can be climbed over
- Edge and corner protection on hearths, tables and low windowsills, chosen to be as unobtrusive as possible
- Discreet magnetic cupboard locks: invisible from outside, so your kitchen still looks like a kitchen
- Window restrictors fitted upstairs, and blind cords made safe or replaced with cordless
- A fireguard for the woodburner, fixed rather than free-standing, if you have a stove
- Finger-guards and soft-close where doors are slammed most
- Outside too: the gate latch raised, pond made safe, garden steps given a handrail
- Bathroom done sensibly: thermostatic control checked, a step that is actually stable
Calmly, early, and clean
Timing is the whole thing
We aim to be finished by around thirty-four weeks. Paint needs to air, plans need slack, and babies pay no attention to schedules. Nesting energy peaks late, but the last month is the worst possible time for dust sheets in the house.
Safe by fixing, not by gadget
Most child safety products are sold on anxiety. Very few of them beat a gate screwed into solid timber and a bookcase bolted to a wall. We fit the things that work, skip the things that do not, and tell you which is which.
It should still be your house
A home does not have to look like a soft play centre. Locks that cannot be seen, guards chosen to disappear, gates in a finish that suits the hall. The house stays yours; it simply stops being a hazard.
They remember the step where a child sat to put on shoes.The Book of Care · Chapter Two
What we are, and are not
We are careful tradespeople who fit things properly and think about how they look. We are not a child safety consultancy, and we are certainly not the people to advise you on safer sleep, which belongs with your midwife, your health visitor and the Lullaby Trust. We do read their guidance, though, which is why we build the nursery around room sharing for the first six months rather than pretending the cot goes in on day one. What we can do is make the physical house match the advice you have been given, which is generally the part nobody has time for.
Two things we will tell you plainly, because they save money and improve safety at the same time. Socket covers are a bad idea: UK sockets are already shuttered, and covers can hold those shutters open or be forced in the wrong way round, which is why RoSPA advises against them. And a pressure-fit gate should never guard the top of a staircase, however good the packaging looks. We would rather lose the sale of a dozen plastic covers than fit something that makes your home less safe.
A nursery prepared as a full Room Refresh, covering preparation, decorating, blackout, lighting, storage and furniture built and anchored, is typically around £1,365, with most rooms landing between £1,230 and £1,650 depending on the storage. Decorating the room alone is about £930. A stair gate fitted properly is £95 to £130 depending on what there is to fix into, though a single gate on its own visit meets our £110 minimum. A whole-house proofing visit covering gates, anchoring, locks, restrictors and edge protection is around £555, and £420 to £680 covers most houses. Every price is confirmed in writing before we start.
The services on this site are starting points rather than a menu. They can be combined, taken apart, or reduced to the single job you actually want doing. If all you need is one stair gate fitted properly, a bookcase anchored to a wall or a blackout blind hung, ring and ask for exactly that.
Asked and answered, honestly
Will the baby sleep in the nursery straight away?
Almost certainly not. NHS and Lullaby Trust guidance is that a baby sleeps in their own cot or Moses basket in the same room as you, for every sleep, day and night, for at least the first six months, because it lowers the risk of sudden infant death. So the nursery starts life as a changing room, a dressing room, a store and a calm place to feed, and becomes the bedroom later. We build it for both from the outset, which is why the storage and the lighting matter as much as the paint.
When should the nursery be done?
Earlier than most people plan for. We aim to finish by around thirty-four weeks, which leaves time for paint to air properly and for anything unexpected to be sorted calmly. The last few weeks of a pregnancy are not the moment for dust sheets, and babies pay no attention to schedules.
Do you use special paint?
We use low-odour, low-VOC paints as standard in nurseries and finish early enough that the room has aired thoroughly before anyone sleeps in it. This is ordinary good practice rather than an upgrade, and we do not charge extra for it.
Should I fit socket covers?
No. UK sockets already have shutters built in, and plastic covers can hold those shutters open or be forced into a socket the wrong way round, which makes the situation worse rather than better. RoSPA advises against them. We would rather tell you that than sell you a bag of them.
Are pressure-fit stair gates good enough?
Not at the top of the stairs. A pressure-fit gate can be pushed out of its opening, so the top of a staircase should always have a screw-fitted gate, properly anchored into something solid. Pressure-fit gates are fine at the bottom of the stairs or in a doorway.
Can you just do the safety bits?
Yes. Plenty of people ask us for a stair gate and a few cupboard locks and nothing else. The nursery and the proofing are separate jobs that happen to suit each other, and either can be booked on its own.
Expecting? Let us take one thing off the list.
Tell us the room, the due date and roughly what you had in mind. We will tell you what it would cost, what we would do differently, and when we would need to start to be comfortably finished in time.