The one with the...Baby Nursery (Part 6 - Nursery Reveal)

Finally, after many months of projects- Part 1 - Wall Paint, Part 2- Furniture Makeover, Part 3 - Textiles, Part 4 - Dutch Door, and Part 5- Wall Decor, we are finally done with the nursery!  We actually only finished it about 2 weeks before the due date...just in the nick of time! 

Here are the pictures of the finished nursery from different angles: 

There you have it! This room is all ready for the baby to arrive and move in.  And now that it's been 2 weeks since the baby's arrival, we are still very happy with the way the nursery turned out.  The baby seems to like it too, especially the contrasting colors in the curtains, the letters, book ledges, and the bunting.  When he's awake he'll stare at these things in awe.  The layout of the furniture seems to work pretty well too!  Hopefully as the baby grows older we won't have to do a lot to modify the room to turn it into a big boy's room.  We kept the colors non-baby-ish for this reason. 

Speaking of the baby... I am being summoned!

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The one with the... Baby Nursery (Part 5- Wall decor)

With all of the big things done in the nursery, the only thing left was to dress up the walls!

For the wall above the crib, I wanted to do something fun with colors.  I saw this post with a super cute alphabet wall in nautical colors and I was sold.  This would be the inspiration for the alphabet wall in our nursery: 

The colors they used would go perfect in the nursery and I liked that they used different size and fonts for the letters.  It makes it look a lot more artsy than using all the same size and font letters.  To start I needed the letters.  I dragged Dave to JoAnn's about 30 minutes away because I knew they had a good selection of wooden letters.  Once at the store, I spent a good 20 minutes trying to line up all the letters , carefully choosing different fonts and sizes so that it looked like the one in the inspiration blog.  The letters themselves were not cheap...some of the larger ones were about $5 but the little ones ran about 50 cents. I also threw in some thicker cardboard letters (H, T, Z) and thicker wooden letters (D, O) to give it depth.   

I ended up not getting the O because I wanted to see if I could find a ship's wheel to use as the O.  JoAnn's didn't have any but I found one on ebay.  

I spent one day on a weekend and just painted all the letters, mainly using paint that I already had from other projects. Here are some of the painted letters: 

After painting them, I sprayed a clear protective coat on them, which I actually regretted later because it turned some of the white letters yellow. :(  But at this point I didn't really care that much because my due date was fast approaching and I wanted to get the nursery DONE! Instead of painting some letters I decided to wrap them with yarn or twine to give it texture.  

Once I was all done with painting and decorating the letters I laid them out on the nursery rug so that Dave could help me mount them on the wall.  Speaking of the rug-- for some reason finding a rug for the nursery was quite a difficult task for me.  First I couldn't decide whether I wanted an 8 x 10 or a 5 x 7 (the price difference was huge between the two sizes), and then I struggled to find a rug in a color/pattern that would work in the room AND that was soft.  One day the baby will be crawling around on the rug so I wanted it to be as soft as possible.  After looking on websites such as Overstock, Target, Wayfair, RugsUSA, etc... and even going to Pottery Barn kids to look at their way over priced rugs, I finally found one at Home Goods for a lot less than what i would have paid at any of the other websites/stores! 

Most of these letters didn't come with mounting brackets in the back so instead of nailing them to the wall, we decided to use the 3M Command strips with velcro.  None of the letters were too heavy so the Command strips work well!  We had to use a lot of them because this was going over the crib and we didn't want any of the letters to fall on the baby.  It sure beats nails though!  

Here is the alphabet wall all done!  

On the wall opposite the alphabet wall above the dresser, I wanted to do something like this from YoungHouseLove:  

They took pictures, artwork, drawings, etc of things that were meaningful and framed them in different sized white frames.  

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to frame and once I made up my mind we went to Ikea to pick up some white Ribba frames.  Then Dave helped me mount them on the wall, this time using nails because the frames are much heavier and they come with mounting brackets.  We first cut a large piece of butcher paper and laid out where we wanted each frame to go on the floor.  Then we drew the outlines of the frames on the butcher paper and taped the paper to the wall.  From there, it was much easier to mark the butcher paper where the nail holes would go and mount the frames.  Then when we were all done, we just pulled the butcher paper off!  

Here's some of the framed pieces close up. This art work was done by our dear friend Erin.  She kept with our nautical theme and sewed an anchor, whale, and a sailboat out of embroidery thread.   Isn't it super cute? We have such talented friends! 

Dave came home from his mom's house one day with a roll of wallpaper border that was used in his room as a kid.  It's got super geeky computer-related words on it, but we liked that it was a part of Dave's childhood so we decided to cut out a piece of it and frame it. 

We got so many baby shower cards from friends, family, coworkers and I saved them all to go in the baby's memory book.  This one jumped out at me and I thought it would be cute to frame!

Many of you know that earlier this year we lost Dave's father to cancer.  He was the best father and father-in-law anyone could have asked for.  When we were at the West Point Academy for his internment, I picked up this needlepoint kit at the gift store.  It was the first time I had done needlepoint and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  Dave asked me to add the "Class of 1965," his Dad's graduation year.  We both love and miss his Dad so much and we wished that he could have been around to meet his grandson.  We found out the sex of the baby before he passed.  We got to see him smile when we told him that the last name would be carried on by his grandson. This framed needlepoint is one of the ways that we are honoring and remembering him  We plan on making sure our son knows how great of an individual, father, and grandfather he was.   

In this frame, the top picture of Dave as a baby with his Dad and the bottom one is me as a baby.  The middle is blank because that's where the baby's photo will go!  

The next one is a few bars from Dave's favorite lullaby, which is entitled "Lullaby" by Billy Joel. 

Continuing with the nautical theme, I printed out a clipart of Mickey in Disney's Steamboat Willie and cut out a silhouette using card stock.  Then I made a blue and white striped background out of card stock and framed it all in this shadow box.  

And finally, we framed a picture from our maternity photo session done by our friend Alice.  It just so happened that we took the pictures near the ocean in California and there was one of us in front of a sailboat!

Here it is... the wall of framed pictures/art all mounted!  The empty shadow frame on the bottom left will be for the baby's hospital paraphernalia-- hat, onesie, bracelet, etc.  

For the wall above the changing table, I got the idea to make bunting, or nautical-looking flags, from this site (found via Pinterest):  

Using fabric that I already had on hand, I cut out triangles, sewed them together, ironed on interfacting, and then sewed them onto ribbon to make this: 

Lastly, we needed a place to put all the books that we were beginning to collect for the baby.  I went to trusty Pinterest to find this blog where they made ledges out of plywood: 

It was a good idea but we really didn't need that many shelves and although these seem simple to make, after the cutting, gluing/nailing, sanding, priming, painting, etc...it could quickly turn into a much larger project that we had the energy for at this point.  A friend recommended that we use pre-made shelves from Ikea, which were perfect for the job! Just mount them on the wall and voila, done!    

So that's all for the wall decor. The next post will be the Baby Nursery reveal where we put it all together!

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The one with the Baby Nursery (Part 4 - Dutch Door)

In Part 1 of the Baby Nursery post I mentioned that we had big plans for the nursery door. 

We didn't paint it when we painted the trim and the closer door because we had plans to cut it in half and turn it into a dutch door.  That way we can keep the dog child out of the nursery but still be able to see in/out.  I got the idea from, where else but, Pinterest! Some people use just half the door as baby gates:

Here's an example of a dutch door for a nursery: 

To start, the door needed four hinges instead of three.   Dave took off the hinge in the middle and chiseled two additional slots in both the door trim and the door itself.  

He taped the door to help prevent the wood from cracking as he chiseled.  The middle blue tape is where the door will be eventually sawed in half.

Once the hinges were in and secured, Dave took the door to the table saw and made the cut.  Notice that the door is actually hollow on the inside.  Dave used small pieces of wood to fill in the hollow door.  

One of the things that Dave's sister Susan recommended that we do is install a magnetic latch thingymabob (I'm sure there is a technical name for it) so that when we only want the bottom half to swing open and closed, the top half of the door is secure to the wall.

 

He also manufactured a lip out of a small piece of wood to cover the small gap between the top and bottom of the door. Add in the new hardware...and voila! A completed dutch door!

   

Now that most of the big things in the nursery are done, it's time to add the wall decor to jazz it up!  

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The one with the... Baby Nursery (Part 3 - Textiles)

With the large furniture items in the nursery completed, we move onto other projects, specifically those involving more fabric and textiles.  

Dave's mom gave us this bassinet to use.  It was the same bassinet that Dave and all his siblings used as babies as well as most of his nieces and nephews.

Pluto so nice to test out the bassinet for his baby brother:  

We wanted to change up the bassinet covering to match our nursery decor, so I once again went to Pinterest to find some ideas. I found this bassinet with a simple white skirt and a black ribbon trim on the bottom:  

So off to the fabric store I went to get some thicker white fabric and navy ribbon. I was able to reuse the inner lining of the bassinet (the bowl part) but unfortunately there was no real easy way to sew the bassinet cover other than using the measuring tape, eyeballing it, and a lot of pinning.  This is what I started with for the skirt: 

Once the skirt was done, I sewed the decorative navy ribbon on the top and added a larger and smaller ribbon trim towards the bottom: 

Probably the hardest part of the bassinet was covering the hood.  I pinned the fabric onto the hood and sewed elastic on the top and bottom for the outside fabric.  Then I had to hand sew the outside fabric to the inside fabric, which took a while. (I now understand the wonders of a thimble!)  I realized that there was a small gap between the hood and the base of the bassinet so I sewed a small flap to cover the gap and then covered the seam with more navy ribbon. 

Here is the finished bassinet!  Front view:    

  

Back view.  See the little flaps on the hood?

Side view:

Even before we turned the room into a nursery, I already had these Ikea Merete curtains in "Bleached."  I am a fan of curtains with grommets and at $28 for a pair of 57'x98" curtains, it is a steal!  They're pretty thick curtains and although they are not room darkening, they do block out some of the light.   

But white curtains seemed a little boring for the nursery, especially with all the white furniture the bottom half of the wall being white as well.  I found this post on Pinterest for DIY painted striped curtains.  It looked easy enough and I figured it wouldn't be a huge deal if I messed it up because I only spent $28 on the curtains themselves.  

First I hung the curtains up and hemmed them to the right length.  Next, I started measuring the curtains to mark it and tape where I the stripes to be.  While trying to measure out stripes I learned two important lessons: 1) it's not easy to measure the fabric and make straight lines and 2) trying to work on the floor and being 32 weeks pregnant doesn't work so well together. Dave came to my rescue and not only did he have an ingenious idea of how to draw out the curtains, he also helped me finish the task no time! 

Dave recommended that we just measure the two ends and then use a chalk line to draw a horizontal line. From there it was super easy to put down the blue tape so we could paint! He also reminded me that when they are hanging, the stripes on the curtain aren't going to look exactly straight anyway so no one would know if they are a little off. 

For the navy stripes we used the same BM Old Navy paint that we used on the dresser and nightstand.  Following the tutorial, I added textile medium to the paint.  Warning: the curtain eats up A LOT of paint. Using foam rollers we painted two coats, taking off the tape and then retaping in between coats.  After the two coats, we were done! Or so we thought...

When we hung the curtains back up and up against the light, we quickly realized that there were some spots that we missed.  So I took a foam brush and touched up the spots. Easy peasy, right?  Unfortunately, for some reason the touch up paint looked different from the rolled-on paint and the curtain looked very splotchy. :(  By then I was also running out of the BM paint and I decided that it wasn't so economical to use good quality paint on curtains. So I went to Home Depot and just got some cheaper paint color-matched to BM Old Navy.  But the HD paint quality was slightly different and we ended up having to paint 3 more coats before the paint looked even and not splotchy.  What seemed like an easy project took us a really long time!!    

So lesson learned for anyone who is planning on painting curtains: 1) make sure you use the same paint and premix a lot of it with the textile medium. Then use that same mixed paint on every coat!  2)  Do not try to spot paint with a brush because it will look splotchy.  It's better just to roll on another coat.  3) Always pull off the tape before the paint dries!  
    

Here is one of the finished painted striped curtain panels in the nursery: 

As I mentioned in the post about the nursery furniture, the crib was the only piece of furniture that we got new.  My sister and brother-in-law got us a convertible crib as a gift for the baby!  After Dave put the crib together I started looking into a crib skirt.   

I liked this crib skirt from Pottery Barn but was not willing to pay $60 for it!   

So I searched for tutorials for how to make a crib skirt and found this post:

The nice thing about making an adjustable crib skirt is that you can move it up and down based on the height of the mattress. The drop-side cribs were declared to be "unsafe" so newer cribs are made so that you adjust the mattress up and down.  The crib skirt I made is actually just long pieces of fabric with ribbon sewed on the top that tie to the metal base.  As the crib gets adjusted lower, I can retie the crib skirt so that it is higher and not dragging on the floor.       

Here's the finished crib skirt: 

That's it for the bassinet, curtains, and the crib skirt!  In the next post, we'll share how we cut the nursery door in half (whaaaaat?)  

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