Mother's Room in the Workplace

My beloved employee, Melissa is expecting in June. We were working on a new employee orientation project at work which prompted the need for photographs of various areas of our office. In our building we have a Mother's Room which to my horror I discovered they were calling "The Lacation Room." The room was located in a private room in our building's fitness center. I asked Melissa to snap a few pictures so we could use them in our orientation presentation. So she snapped these pictures and upon opening them, this is what I saw:

Are you thinking what I am thinking? If you are, you are thinking that is horrific that this is what we call a Mother's Room. It's basically a closet that needs some cleaning and some love. Mothers who are breastfeeding their babies who have transitioned back to work after maternity leave are using this room as a private space to express their milk several times a day. It's fine that it's small, after all, all you are doing is expressing milk but there is nothing in this room that says relax or be comfortable. Where's the comfortable chair? Where's the love?

I knew I'd be alone in the belief that this had to be fixed and I wasn't completely wrong so I knew I had to do this on the cheap if I was going to do it. Our building Facility Director graciously offered to order paint and paint the room. He even let me choose the color!

We chose two shades of blue to give the room some slight dimension. I decided we would go with a shabby chic sort of decor and started to thrift various things that could go into the room. I found some cute pictures of moms and daughters on the internet and snagged them and then printed them at Costco in black and white and put them into some cheap frames. I also did some cute graphic sayings and put those into some thrifted frames. I scored a mantle shelf for $4 and a coat hook originally from Pottery Barn (with the original $70 price tag on it) for $3. We gave the room a new name, Salon "M." We're saying that its a cute take on Mother's Room but everyone knows it's Salon Melissa .. ha! ha!

Bought this beautiful and very comfortable rocking chair on Craigslist for $20, didn't like the drab green color (or the stains) so took a bottle of RIT dye and dyed the fabric ... very pleased with the results, by the way!

Here is a picture of the before and after. We had a ton of fun and were successful in transforming it. Would love to hear your thoughts!