Nursery

Long time no see.  I got pregnant in December and took the next several months off vomiting.  But I've got lots to share now.  First off, baby boy's nursery.  I've had pieces of it in my head since we moved in.  So pretty much the day we found out the gender, I got to work.

First, a tour, shall we?  

Not much going on over there eh?  That's because we've got a photo shoot coming up.  I'm not sure if I want to use our pregnancy photos or newborns, but a couple of those are going there.

So this room has been "the nursery" ever since we moved in almost 3 years ago.  It was covered in dust, and the paint job felt like sandpaper.  But it took a while to get around to having a baby. ;)  So it soon became the kids' downstairs playroom and a spare room to put kids that were visiting or kids that wouldn't stop playing at bedtime.  It was covered in toys and, like I said, dust.  There was dust on the walls!  So I started with the insane task of patching all the holes from the previous owners (they were terrible painters and clearly didn't care) and sanding down all of the walls.  Most people would just clean the walls and paint right over it, but I knew it would bug me to no end if the texture didn't even out with the next coat.  

I'm terrible about taking before pictures, but this is basically how it started life, after the floor full of toys got moved back upstairs and I started prepping.  So I covered everything, took my palm sander and went to town.  My hands ached; it was a HUGE mess.  I had to wear two masks to keep it out of my nose.  It took a day or two just to clean up.  Then paint.  That took a few days too, and given my condition, all of this hurt... a lot.  I chose a color really similar to what was there b/c I liked the color, and it went with the bedsheets.  But even an orange (going on top of a similar orange) with so much less red in it still took two coats!  I wasn't happy to have to go back for another gallon of paint.  But at least I didn't have to match the two gallons, b/c the mixers got it perfect.  Thank you computers.  After paint and clean up, I replaced the blinds.  They were those cheap little plastic blinds with orange paint all over them. (I told you they were terrible painters!)  I definitely didn't want to try and clean all that orange dust out of them either.  So after all of that mess came the fun stuff.

This dresser was my mom's.  She got it, secondhand, when she was having babies.  It's solid (and I mean solid!) cherry, but was painted a butt ugly green.  So 3 summers ago, when we lived with them, I needed a project and offered to re-finish it for her.  She chose a black stain, and I started stripping.  I swore I would NEVER strip paint again (more on that in a later post.)  The slightest breeze would send burning chemicals all over my skin... but I was thrilled with how it turned out, and so was she.  I love how the red shows through the black stain.   Even my dad, who said it was a shame to use such a dark color on such beautiful cherry, liked it when it was done.  

I told her and all of my siblings ever since, that dresser IS MINE when she's done with it.  Well, my mom recently inherited some furniture.  So with no room to spare, it became mine.  Yippee!!  And just in time b/c, with baby three coming, I'd been searching for a dresser.  I wouldn't have chosen a black dresser for this room, but in the end I like it with the room too.

Here's what inspired the room.  Not long after moving into this house, my mother-in-law gave me two sheet sets that she got for $2 each.  She's all about cowboys.  Me and my kids, not so much.  But I thought it'd be fun for a baby boy's room.  So that's where it all started.  The only problem is that they were twin sized.  I had to cut and re-sew them to fit a crib.  Not hard, it took about an hour for each sheet.  And most of that time was spent threading elastic through the hem.

I made a bed skirt for baby #1 (poor baby #2 didn't have a room, or a bed.  We moved every 3 months for the first two years of his life.)  The skirt was a baby blue, but it didn't match.  So I dyed it with a bit of blue dye and black tea.  I really didn't expect it to match to my satisfaction, but it ended up pretty darn close!  In fact, this picture doesn't do it justice b/c that particular sheet is a little faded.  I was thrilled.  I had plans for a super cute baby bumper that would better tie the room together.  But then I read they're "not safe" anymore.  I rolled my eyes at that b/c nothing is safe for babies anymore.  But then, I also remembered how much of a pain in the butt they are when trying to change the sheets 20 times a day.  So I nixed it.

These curtains were also from baby #1's room.  But they were way too short for our windows.  So I bought a few handkerchiefs and bleached them to age them.  Advice:  do it over the stove, or in the sun only if you're sitting right there watching.  If you just throw it in a bucket, it'll take a while.  Luckily, two was just the right width of the curtain.  I backed them with some brown fabric that I had on hand so I can kinda black out baby's room.  They don't look good closed though; I wish I had another set.  I suppose I should have picked out the existing hem along the sides to make it all match up better.  But it was good enough for me.  I've done this before and knew the fabrics wouldn't line up just right.  

I had one handkerchief left to make the pillowcase for my nursing chair.  It was a little too big, and I didn't want to loose the border.  So it took some math, but I was able to take the extra out of the middle.  If you zoom in, you can see how.  That's also backed with the brown.

The nursing chair is also from baby #1.  It's a little old granny's chair with that gold veloure-type fabric over it.  I got it from a garage sale for about $20, if I remember right from 7 years ago.  So I slipcovered it in this cute textured green.  But it's a bit worn out now, so it needed a bit of work too.  I cut a new cushion out of some foam I'd rescued form a neighbor's garbage.  If you've ever bought couch cushion foam, you'd understand.  I smelled to make sure it wasn't from a smoker's house, but as I cut into it, I saw that it was.  The top inch was gray, ew.  I sprayed with vinegar and rinsed gobs of black out of it and dried it out.  If you need to clean foam, here's a tip:  sit it in the hot sun for a day or two.  Then, take a blow drier to it to get the inside/middle.  I overheated my blow drier, but it was the only way to get it dry in the middle.  To avoid overheating, hold it a couple inches away and take breaks.  After that, I sewed a layer of batting and then muslin around it.  Then stuffed it back into the case.  So much more comfy now!  I also washed the slipcover and added this pocket on the side.  I've wanted a pocket on the side for quite some time, but never did it.  So glad I did now. 

And the hunt for just the right rug.  I wanted one big enough to fill the room, but didn't want to spend a lot... tough order.  I poured over websites and a Big Lots type of store in town, taking pictures with my iPod.  I agonized for a while before settling on this one.  I wasn't sure about the dk brown right next to a black dresser.  But I'm thrilled with my choice.  Given how dark this brown is, and the red streaks in the dresser, I think they look fine together.  It's a 7'x9' wool rug clearanced for $130.  It's cushy too.  Hubby says it doesn't match its self. :)  But I'm still a little giddy over it, a month later.  It's got a sort of corderouy texture to it with this swirly leaf pattern in it.  The colors were perfect.  Love!

I'm always looking for cheap ways to frame pictures without them looking chincy.  I used to be a custom framer, so my taste doesn't come cheap.  So I saw this on pintrest, or something similar.  And the room lends its self to the rustic.  So it was perfect.  I used some pallets I'd gotten and torn apart years ago and mounted the $3 Walmart frames to them.  My two critics don't like them.  Hubby says they're creepy.  I agree the one on the right is a little.  But I love the one on the left... maybe I'll eventually replace them with some kind of cowboy sillouette, maybe not.  Those of you who follow my personal blog know a bit about how big of a deal the ultrasound was for me. 

During this process, we took a trip.  I took the kids to the local children's museum where they had these murals.

I wanted something to spice up the room, so this tree would be perfect!  When I got home, I bought a quart of brown paint and got busy.

It took about a week.  I am no painter.  I paint walls and furniture, not objects.  So I was pretty nervous to start this on my perfect orange walls.  But armed with my inspiration photo, I got started.  First, I marked where the crib would go with painter's tape to make sure the wall would look balanced, even though the crib is not centered.  Then I taped off the base boards and outlets.  Then, I marked out basically where I wanted the limbs and such.  Then I outlined in black, blending that into the brown.

Before the leaves, as I expected, they were a little wonky here and there.  But I was thrilled that they looked even that good.

It took some shopping around and thinking to come up with a way to do the leaves.  At the museum, they were done with some kind of thin sheet metal.  That was going to be WAY too much time and $.  But I wanted something sturdier than paper.  I wanted the same kind of copper leaves, but quickly decided it was too much brown.  So I settled on white cardstock spray painted: the cheapest, thickest option I could come up with.  With 5 cans of spray paint, and 25 sheets of cardstock, I got 200 leaves, a good place to start.  I used one can of copper too and mixed those in, spraying both front and back.  The kids helped a little.  We would fold the paper down the middle of our leaf and use a template to cut an inverted heart shape, sort of a tear drop shape.  Then we stapled them up.  I love how it turned out!  And 200 turned out to be a good amount for both trees.

My other critic, my daughter really wanted to help more.  She loves decorating and crafting as much as I do, but I have a really hard time letting go of my projects to a 6 year old.  So she made baby a mobile. So sweet.  I hung that to the ceiling before moving the crib back in place.

I had a couple of builds for this room.  I built a side table to put things while I'm nursing.  The top is also made from the pallets.  And the base is made from a 2x2 and some scrap 1x4.  I was going to cut the top down to a circle; I still may, not sure.  But that's why the base is so much smaller than the top.  I sanded everything, stained the base, sanded, and put polyacrylic over everything.  The only thing I bought was the 2x2 which cost about $3.

The last build was this crate.  I was going to make it out of more scrap pallet wood.  But I didn't think I had enough left.  And considering I am pregnant and had a couple other builds going on, I ran out of steam.  So I waited for a handy 40% off coupon to Michael's and bought it for $6.  Score!  It was exactly the size I would've made it too.  I got home and cut a shelf for the middle from some 1x9 I had leftover from something else.  Again, I sanded, stained, sanded and poly'ed and was done about 2 hours later.  That's the beauty of living in the south, were paint dries super quickly.  But it wouldn't totally cure until I got it inside, out of the humidity.  Then I found the center and screwed the shelf in.  I grabbed my level and screwed right through the back into the wall.  These builds would've taken much longer if I wasn't going for the rustic feel with sanded edges and exposed screws.  I would've taken much more care to fill holes, sand, give ample dry time between layers, and apply paint and poly much more neatly.

Ok, whew, that's baby's room.  Anyone still with me?  Impressive.  Lets look at the final product again:

I don't love that the crib is white... but I guess there's enough white in the trim and doors and such that it's fine...  I'd be afraid to paint a baby's crib.  And I'm certainly not buying a new one.

This lamp came from the same store as the rug at $13.  The basket was in my bathroom holding toilet paper.  But I built a wall cabinet recently and it matched here perfectly.  It was a $3 basket that I stained and made a cover for.

So all baby things are cleaned, floors are vacuumed, drawers are filled and organized, I even have a hand full of NB diapers ready for when he comes.  I'm still in frantic project mode though, as I wait impatiently, so I've got a few other things to post about another day.

So here's a breakdown of the cost:

two gallons paint: $50

two blinds: $50

rug: $130

extras (lamp, batting, spray paint, brown paint, crate, 2 frames, handkerchiefs, dye, etc):  I dunno, $50 - $100.  

So this room cost about $330 - $380 to put together.  Not bad!