Nursery Decorating Chapter 1: Sometimes Progress Isn't Pretty

 For the past several months, our nursery has looked something like this.

Very soon after finding out I was pregnant and (before we were even telling people), we came across this crib for sale on Craigslist. I knew I wanted a Jenny Lind style spindle crib in dark wood, and this one, which was only two years old, was an amazing deal at only $60. So we removed our old guest bed and moved in the crib.

Then, in May after my grandfather passed away, were were in his hometown of Perry, Iowa for the funeral, and happened upon a wonderful little antique store. We purchased the rocker, whose arms you can just see in the bottom right corner of the photo. More photos of him to come, but with this purchase we had all the furniture pieces selected for the room - crib, wide dresser, old living room chaise (bottom left) rocker and tall dresser (which can't be see but is next to the rocker). We figured out the general furniture layout we liked and things have sat since then.

Until last week! I decided it was time to attack. Chris was planning on being out of town for the weekend, so I called in some help in the form of my sister and her six-year-old daughter Annabel to get some painting going. Before we could get started though, I had some prep to do.

Chris and I weighed the options of replacing baseboards in the room vs. refinishing them like we did in our own room two and a half years ago. While we like to preserve as much of the house's original materials as much as possible, we decided it made more sense to just start new with these boards for several reasons:

• They were ROUGH. I don't have photographic evidence, but believe me - these ones were in way worse shape than any of the other trim in the house.
• We would have to sand down a lot to get them paintable, risking scattering lead paint dust around our child's future room - not an idea we love.
• The aren't the "nice original wood" we love in the house. Don't get me wrong - fixed up they'll look like a million bucks, but they are low grade pine - not stain grade oak like we have on our main level.
• We can match the style in new boards for about $100 in materials - saving a lot of time and eliminating nearly all of the mess. 

So out the baseboards came! Painting without the baseboards meant that we wouldn't have to worry about edging the bottom of the wall (yay!) and that any damage done in removing them could be repaired prior to painting and putting the new boards in. They came out very easily - I did it by myself in about an hour.

After clearing out the room and purchasing some supplies, we were left with the below scene. See those scratches on the walls? Those are no accident. After I removed the baseboards, Chris and I took a paint scraper and sanding block to the walls to knock off some texture.

We love smooth walls, and while this step still left them far from perfectly smooth, it did take off some of the bumpier spots and goobly-goshes, as we call them. So yes - sometimes progress looks like this.  

Chris also did some light sanding on the window trim, so that it would be ready for a fresh coat of paint while we had the room apart. 

And one important piece to note - the closet in this room contains some of the very last of the original paint from when we moved into the house. That's right - it's crazy turquoise! And you can't tell in the photo, but it's also high gloss paint. If you every wanted to see your reflection in turquoise, this closet was the place to do it. 

I weighed grey paint options, and landed on Sherwin Williams Argos. But when I painted a test patch, it looked blue. And with our robin egg blue curtains, I immediately knew it wouldn't work. 

So Chris suggested I mix in some black paint we had on hand, from painting the back of our fireplace a few years back. Since this experiment would cost us exactly $0 and might make the paint I had purchased for the walls usable, I decided to give it a try. 

So I mixed it in and rolled our new and improved paint onto the walls. As it dried I brought in my fabrics, to test it out. And unfortunately while it was definitely darker, it was still more blue than grey, and clashed with my aqua curtains.

So I bit the bullet and selected new paint - this time Sherwin Williams Dorian Grey (4th down on the swatch). A quick errand and $45 later, we were ready to roll again. Pun intended. 

And while I was a bit bummed about the dollars wasted on my first paint color, it did still work as a first coat, so only one coat of our second grey was required to cover the walls. The photo above shows the difference between the colors - my darkened Argos above our final color of Dorian Grey on the bottom (with our old room color along the top trim - Sherwin Williams Baguette).

And so we painted. We're still re-assembling so more photos are coming soon with the final wall color and a few other updates we made while we were at it.

Oh, and about that closet. It benefited from some extremely enthusiastic child labor. Thanks, Annabel! 

Nursery Planning

In case you missed it, Chris and I made a little announcement earlier this month:

That's right - Baby Jones is scheduled to arrive around Thanksgiving of this year, which means we're busy planning for a lot of changes in our lives, one if which is . . . our nursery! I've been slowly collecting ideas over the last few months, and have recently begun purchasing a few of the staple items that will set the tone for our room.

A quick note - we decided before even becoming pregnant that we want to wait to find out the gender until the baby arrives. We think this is a really personal choice for each expecting parent, but to us it meant a fun surprise after a long wait and the labor process, and we really like that idea. So, this means a gender-neutral nursery (which I am pretty sure we would have opted for anyway).

So, the first step for me was choosing our colors. Fortunately, falling in love with this fabric made it easy for me:

I bought several yards a few weeks ago, and hope to begin making lined curtains out of it very soon. The windows are on the far wall in the room (directly across from the door) so you will see it immediately when you walk in. I love the nice aqua, dark orange, light green, gray and white, as well as the nice long, curvy vertical lines the birch trees on it will make up the wall.

I then chose this fabric to cover our old chaise lounge, which we moved into the room (more information on its replacement in the living room coming soon), and I hope to not completely screw up plan to tackle my first major furniture reupholstering project this summer, covering it with this fabric:

If any of you out there have done reupholstering - feel free to send tips my way! 

We're thinking gray walls and white painted furniture (more on that to come as well), but we probably won't get to that for several months, as Chris is still pretty tied up in his current painting job, and his help will be required since I'm no longer able to sand old trim or use oil-based paints, which we use on all of our trim. In the meantime, though, we've had fun collecting some other items to get us started:

Paper crane mobile made from driftwood and old maps, from Etsy.
 

  Orange and white changing pad cover, from Land of Nod.

 

Porcelain hedgehog nightlight, from Land of Nod.
  

  National parks poster, from Etsy.

Stuffed squirrel from Anthropologie, courtesy of Aunt Steph.
 

And there are still lots of other ideas I find every day that I think will help us keep adding the little touches we want to make this room feel like the cozy, comfortable space we want to create. We'll keep you updated as we go!