Nursery Progress

NBC's nursery is ever-so-slowly coming together. I hope.

First, the "before" pictures - pretty plain, since we never really got around to fully decorating the guest bedroom. (October 11)




I had considered a few options - stripes, squares, and what I called a "Mondrian" wall, even though it wasn't exactly Mondrian...






Then I found this "random rectangles" nursery and fell in love with it:


Sadly, this seemed nearly impossible to execute properly. One semi-crooked line would ruin the whole thing. So we opted for "random trapezoids" instead. Dennis wasn't thrilled to go with the truly "random" thing and made me make a plan, so we mocked this up in photoshop: (October 22)



So, that's the plan for the accent wall (the north wall of the room, adjacent to the garage).

First, we primed the wall completely to hide the old dark green. Then we taped off our mapped trapezoids. (It's a little off, because the plan was not to scale, and we decided to adjust the angle of a couple of lines to avoid the telephone and power outlets on that wall.)



We also started planning the number and letter portions of the nursery at this point:

Once we got the tape up, we put on another coat of primer in the hopes that any seepage would be white (and therefore invisible against the white spaces between the colored areas) instead of the color itself seeping through:


We'll see later how well that worked. HA!

Then it was time to start putting on color! (October 23-27)
Wall, letters, and number canvases.



Finally, after each color got 2 coats of paint, it was time to take down the tape! (October 28) Sadly, there was definitely some color bleed underneath. So that had to be touched up (October 30). But that only took one night.




More progress pics to come as we get them! It's looking like the curtains will be white (thanks, Grandma!), and the rug might be brown. I was going to go with green, but that might just be too much green (the other 3 walls are still "Avocado" as they always have been).

I'm definitely looking forward to getting this part done and the room cleaned up so we (ok, Dennis) can start assembling furniture and we can get everything ready. Only 24 days to go as of this writing!

Update - November 9

Furniture has been assembled!  Dennis spent 2 nights on the dresser (I helped!) and one night on the crib, and we're done!

I woke up at 4:45 this morning with an irresistible urge to work in the nursery.  I spent over two hours determining the proper spacing and alignment for the letter wall, then another hour or so putting the letters up there. I think it came out pretty well. 

While I was in there today, I noticed that the crib is actually wider than the space between the windows. Oops.  The only furniture narrow enough for that space is the bookcase, so I guess that's what goes there.  Then we'll either have the crib on the accent wall and the dresser on the letter wall or vice-versa.  Numbers will likely have to go on the small space of the north wall between the window and the bathroom door. If so, we'll need 10 numbers (and currently only have 9), so that's a little more work.

Update - November 14

Numbers are done!

(click for larger version)

I decided that the stars on the "9" board were a choking hazard and therefore couldn't go on the wall between the bathroom and the east wall.  So they went across the top of the north wall instead. We had already done a "0" panel and figured we might as well include it. 

There was much measuring and leveling, but they went up relatively quickly. While I'd love a do-over on a few things, overall I'm very happy with them.  Hopefully it will help NBC learn his numbers, too.

So, what's left?

We still need to get a rug.  I think I have one picked out.

We're replacing the dresser.  I had wanted to get the same dresser Dexter has, but it was out of stock for months.  Eventually, I felt like we were running out of time, so I bought this one.  It looks nice, but the drawers are very small. Much smaller than Dexter's, and his dresser is usually overflowing as it is, so there was no way this was going to work long-term.  Dexter's dresser was back in stock a week after I bought this one. Ugh.

So we're going to take a loss on this one and try to sell it locally. (Anyone want a gorgeous but sortof small dresser? Perfect for a guest room!)

That's really it.  NBC's Grandma has been working hard on his curtains (plain white panels - nothing too exciting, but they will brighten the room some while blocking the morning light from the east). Then we just need to stock his bookshelf and we should be good to go!