Nursery: Final Reveal

There were a few projects left in the old house that we did before we put the house on the market, and so I'm sharing these with you before sharing all that good stuff about selling, staging, moving, buying the new house, etc etc. Enjoy!

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So, I know that I've been sharing bits and pieces of what we've been doing in the nursery, and all the projects we've done in there, but this is the first time the nursery is actually DONE. Completely finished! Seriously guys, it's amazing (mostly because no room in our house is ever actually considered "finished"!). And just in time for us to move - haha! Oh, the irony. But that's okay - because it's about the journey rather than the destination, right?

The room would look better without the mobile attached to the crib, but Connor really enjoys it, so it's staying right where it is for now.

We put a picture up above the changing table, but never got around to photographing it. Bad blogger, bad blogger...

To increase storage space in the tiny nursery, we installed some hooks to hang up slings, wet bags and diaper bags behind the door. It worked very well! You didn't even notice they were there unless you shut the door (which we didn't do very often). You can also see the large wet bag hanging on the doorhandle that we use for cloth diapers (yep, we jumped on that bandwagon!).

And now let's take a quick peek as to what the room looked like before we turned it into a nursery for the little man, back when it was my studio...

And wayyyyy back, to what it looked like when we bought the house...

And now:

It's sure come a long way!

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Nursery Art: DIY Birth Poster

There were a few projects left in the old house that we did before we put the house on the market, and so I'm sharing these with you before sharing all that good stuff about selling, staging, moving, buying the new house, etc etc. Enjoy!

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Way back before the little guy was even born, I knew that I wanted a fun little graphic poster announcing his full name, birthdate and weight. And, being a graphic designer, I whipped one up in Adobe Illustrator one day, printed it, and framed it.

Project toughness scale: Easy! Anyone can create a fun little poster in any word processor - just type the info, select a font, and play with colors until you get it right. If you're short a kiddo or two, you can even frame it and give it as a gift.

It certainly adds another little personal touch to his nursery, and really brightens up his floating shelves. Orange and blue is such a fun color combination!

Have you been having fun creating some cheapo wall art or gifts lately? Or maybe just having fun with your word processor? There is no shame!

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Nursery: Cuttin' the Curtains Coincidence

There were a few projects left in the old house that we did before we put the house on the market, and so I'm sharing these with you before sharing all that good stuff about selling, staging, moving, buying the new house, etc etc. Enjoy!

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Actually, it's more like "hemming the curtains" but that just didn't sound quite as catchy.

Remember when the closet doors in the nursery used to be these before we started the remodel?

Yuck. Personally I hate sliding doors. Ugh.

Well, we had plans to replace them with some white bifold doors like the master closet...

but, of course, the closet opening wasn't a standard size. Drat.

So we improvised, and used some old curtains we had lying around (they used to be in our living room before we upgraded) and a closet rod to create some fun fabric "doors".

And they worked great!

The only problem?

They were too long.

So, I decided to bleach them so they were a brighter white and then I would hem them using some no-sew tape. I washed them with a little bleach, and threw them in the dryer.

And when I went to measure to see how much I need to hem off the bottom, I was pleasantly surprised!

They had shrunk in the dryer - and were now the perfect length! What a lucky break! Seriously, stuff like that never happens to us. A total happy accident, and I couldn't have been more pleased!

Have you caught a lucky break lately? Boy, am I glad they didn't shrink too much, haha!

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Personalizing It: Nursery Name Letters

Due to Connor's unexpected earlier-than-anticipated arrival, the nursery still wasn't 100% finished by the time he came home, and thanks to those hectic first months weeks of adjusting to sleep-deprivation life with a new baby, it wasn't until Connor was close to 2 months old that we finally got around to putting his little claim on his nursery: hanging his name in the empty space above his crib.

Before he was born I found some sweet wooden-type letters at Hobby Lobby, and brought them home for $2.00 a piece.

I also purchased orange and yellow paint from Wal-Mart along with a cheapo foam brush (the yellow triangles are painter's pyramids, used for setting your projects on so the edges come out nice).

I wanted the letters to have different shades of orange, going from light-medium-dark-dark-medium-light, so each letter's color varied and it would resemble a small spectrum of color on the wall.

So I mixed up different ratios of paints to come up with the three shades...

and simply painted them on. But, of course, it wasn't quite that easy! They ended up taking about 4 coats of paint each to completely cover up the wood (once again, not using primer first comes back to bite me in the butt!). You can see in the photo below how thin the first coat was...

Once they were painted and dried, it was time to hang! Although, thanks to Connor arriving the day we were planning on hanging the letters, we didn't get around to it until well into 2012. Oops.

We used the moveable velcro 3M picture hanging strips - to save money and because the letters were super-light, we cut each strip into 2 and then stuck 'em on the back of the letter. Then we simply measured where we wanted the letter and stuck it to the wall. We didn't even have to be very exact because we could reposition (thanks to the velro) the letter if it was a little off. Super easy! It definitely made us wish we would've done it earlier (like 2 months earlier)!

All in all we love it. And Connor does, too. It really adds alot of character and pizazz to the room, and it makes us smile everytime we walk into the room. We can even see ourselves in the future teaching Connor how to spell his name by pointing to the letters up there.

It also adds some fun color and excitement to the very-very-neutral-and-chill room, which is just what we were looking for. And to compare, here's the room before...

And now:

Not bad, huh? (Oh, and the colors are a bit different in the photos because the newer pics were taken during the middle of the day, and the previous ones were taken at sunset. Big difference, huh? If you're wondering, the current photos are much closer to the actual colors of the room!).

Have you done any personalizing lately?

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Nursery Update

Howdy, folks! First, please let me apologize for my lack of updates recently on the blog. People aren't lying when they say that the closer a baby's due date gets, the busier you get! But we're finally getting around to all those little things that we've been putting off forever, and I gotta say that it feels pretty good to finally be crossing some of those things off our huge to-do list (that never seems to end).

So - are you ready for a nursery progress/update on this room? Just like the last few posts about this room, we're not 100% done, but we're getting super-close now! It's almost done - just a couple more projects and we'll be calling this room finished - hopefully just in time for the little guy's arrival!

Here is our baby boy's whimsical nursery thus far:

Lookin' pretty good, right? Once we get completely done in here, I'll go into more details on our DIY projects, the total cost of the room, as well as telling you the story of some of the heirloom items in here and why they are so special - so stay tuned!

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