Nursery Reveal!!

Wow, so we finally have the nursery done. Well… it’s about 85% done because I’m waiting on some custom framed items to come in…

Later this week some posts will be going up to show the various projects I undertook to get the room done (refinishing a dresser and side table) so I might as well get the nursery reveal out there for ya!

I don’t have any before pictures… we were so excited to get started I couldn’t get my camera out before Bronce had started stripping the room of all the other stuff. This front bedroom used to be the upstairs guest room, but about a year ago we moved my office/craft room downstairs and relocated the guest room to my old office. This small bedroom sat empty for a few months before we were ready to get started.

One of the annoyances of an old house is popcorn ceilings. Huge, resounding rounds of applause go to Bronce for spending hours and days and a few weeks dealing with the popcorn ceiling in the future nursery. Scraping, sanding, painting… and the whole ceiling flaked off while we were at a UT football game this fall. Then he had to start over again and added an oil-based primer to the mix which seems to have done the trick – now we have a smooth, beautiful ceiling.

Mom and Dad came in one weekend to help us paint over the beige walls… the “gray” color I was so excited about (seriously, we taped up paint samples and debated for weeks) ended up a dark blue. Drat! So before we did a second coat we doctored the paint Hanson-style with any and all white paints we could find in the garage. The result was a much softer light blue/gray color. Once we got the furniture and textiles in the room the walls really did pop to a soft gray and the blue tint seems to be gone.

Oh, wait… did you want pictures?? Okay. :)

Here’s the crib area.

I plan to do a monogram above the crib… haven’t decided if I’ll get wooden letters or paint directly on the walls. I’m about to undertake a painting project over the bed in our master bedroom so I’ll see how that goes and decide if I should do the same thing in here or not.

Mom did all the textiles in the room – she’s amazing! Take a closer look at the bumper pad. I love this fabric! It’s so cute. We did a solid orange on the outside and on the dust ruffle so it’s cohesive from the door, but you can clearly see this pop of pattern when looking down in the crib. I think it will be a great contrasting fabric to mesmerize the baby.

We’ll be using only white sheets in the crib.

The curtains are beautiful too. Take a look at the long view and the close-up. Sometimes it looks like fireworks, sometimes like chrysanthemums, and overall I feel like it has a sort of safari feel going on.

Mom also made the dust ruffle for the crib and is working on some large floor pillows and small pillows for the glider. I see a long future of amazing creations for the baby with my talented Mom on the job!

One of my favorite parts of the nursery is the dresser… I spent hours… seriously, like days on this thing. It was a Craigslist find that we loved and I completely refinished – filled the drawer pull holes, sanded, primed, painted, polycrylic… It was a beast. And it will get its own post later this week!

When I did the dresser I also refinished a side table that I found for $5 at Goodwill. It was previously stained and falling apart… Now it looks charming and ready to hold my beverage and book!

  To zoom out on that side table, you can see the whole glider area. After spending $80 on the dresser and side table, we splurged a little on this glider. I wanted one that was tall enough for me to fall asleep against the back and comfy enough to curl up in for hours of late-night nursing. We LOVE it! Sometimes I catch Bronce sitting in here looking around the room. I wish I knew what he was thinking. :)

Here’s a closer look at the artwork that frames the window. I found these prints on Etsy (from Sea Urchin Studio) but they were only available in a 5”x7” size. I contacted the seller and she very reasonably sold me larger prints. They were a steal!! They were actually the very first purchase we made for the nursery… back when we knew “gray and orange” would be the main colors… I found them, loved them, and bought them. I’m so glad they ended up working in here!

 

That little monkey is so cute and joyful. :) I found the frames at Michaels on clearance – they were white and pretty beat up. I took a swatch of  the curtain fabric to Lowes and matched the gold-ish yellow color to their Valspar “Maize” spray paint. The orange in the prints is very different from the orange in the drapes so I decided to go with another of the primary nursery colors for additional contrast. I think the final product looks pretty good!

I love the paper lanterns over the crib. I keep debating getting some in orange but I’ll probably do the monogram in a dark orange so that might be overkill. I’ll wait on that. (I found these paper lanterns at World Market). On the wall to the right of the dresser I’ll be hanging the ABC cross-stitch Mom made for my baby nursery back in 1980 – we had it re-matted and reframed to coordinate with the room. It will look perfect here!

The other big project in the room was painting all the trim, doors, and the inside of the closet with a high-gloss soft white. It helped make the gray paint “POP” and brightened up an otherwise nasty closet. Mom and I spent an hour at Home Depot in the closet organizer aisle making sense of my vision and designed this closet (and one for the guest room)… When the baby is in bigger clothes I can remove one of the shelving units and adjust the height to make two hanging shelves (there are two tracks running vertically that allow for these adjustments).

Well, there you have it! Our beautiful gender-neutral nursery… ready and waiting for us to get this little guy (or girl!) home! When I get a few of the additional wall accessories (we’ll also be doing a little vignette behind the bedroom door) I’ll put those photos on the blog, too.