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! 

Shingle Refurbish - South Wall (Side 3 of 4)

Before and after Mount Etna blue Duration Paint from Sherwin Williams.

The weather finally turned to spectacular this weekend. Our March and April were unusually rainy and cold, so we've held off on typical outdoor stuff.

I'm about 70% done with this project. The last 30% might be the most difficult, as my motivation seems to taper with house projects as they span in time. Thankfully, I've found a new source of motivation in a pregnant wife. I've got about 6 months to put this project in the books.

If you're keeping score, I started the south side last Fall. After this past weekend, I'm happy to say the bottom half of this side is done. I'd love to put up a new post in June with the entire South wall complete. Fingers crossed.

Looking up, you can see what work I have ahead of me.

We'd like to replace the middle window asap. You can see it's pretty beat up. The paint in this section of shingles were really blistered and came off swimmingly.

Some shingles just aren't worth the effort of stripping. The old paint is secure and smooth, so I've learned to embrace a little bit of irregularity.