Nursery Reveal

I've been showing you bits and pieces of the nursery for weeks now but it is finally totally finished!! After I got the last project completed, I just stood there in the middle of the room feeling strangely unburdened. I LOVED working on the nursery but sometimes having an ever expanding to do list in my head is overwhelming. I'm sure I'll add things to it here and there over the next few months but I'm thrilled to say that I completed all the main work during my 2nd trimester which was my overall goal.

So, without further ado, here it is:

The wall need an extraordinary amount of prep work but once that was finished, I rolled on 3+ coats of Olympic Paint's "Lettuce Alone" in their no VOC / low odor paint.

The crib is the DaVinci Alpha Mini Rocking Crib that I purchased off of Craigslist. I had to touch up the paint a little in places but Olympic Paint's "Delicate White" in semi-gloss matched perfectly. I made the fitted sheet out of "ultra cuddle" fabric and is a deep red to match the other reds in the room.

Here we have Claudia Chifforobe which was originally stained wood and in Snickerdoodle's nursery when he was an infant. It had a rough life though and needed to be restained or painted so I chose to paint it.

This is another piece I used the Delicate White paint on. The light on top is the Fillsta lamp from Ikea attached to a Dimma switch also from Ikea so it can be set really low and used as a nightlight.

Just next to Claudia is the reading/feeding corner.

The chair is the Ikea Tullsta but I purchased ours off of Craigslist and then got a new Ektorp cover in Blekinge white which I bleached to get it the stark white you see here. The foot stool was something I built one weekend using scrap wood and fabric from other projects. The top lifts off to reveal storage beneath.

The step stool you see next to it was an Ikea Bekvam we had on hand that I painted. To me, step stools are infinitely more useful to have around than small tables (that can be pulled down on crawling babies' heads) so that's going to be the table for my drink and book for those late night feedings.

We also didn't want to purchase a new changing table but the one for Snickerdoodle's nursery was too big so we sold it and I put together a changing station using Ikea's Billy bookcases.

For more on how I set this whole thing up, you can check out my Ikea Hack 1 and Ikea Hack 2 posts.

Up above the changing table is a cool light I created using a rope light, stuff from around the house and Snickerdoodle's mad finger painting skills.

I wanted something to provide just a little bit of light but that would also be interesting for the baby to look at during changes. This is also attached to a Dimma switch from Ikea so it can be turned down nice and low for sleepy nighttime changes.

Now, on to the window treatments:

Somehow I managed to miss blogging about the window treatments but here they are closed. The blackout Roman shade is something I made out of an old sheet, blackout fabric from JoAnn (on sale no less, hooray) and some random materials found in our garage to hold each section straight. The curtains are also parts of the sheet with some red bias tape stitched down to the bottom edge. Having curtains AND a shade give us options on how much light and fresh air to let in. Finally, the cornice across the top is one I made out of scrap wood, foam and more sheet remnants. The lotus flower is just printed on photo paper and is significant because the artwork my awesome cousin did also contains lotus flowers.

And now, the artwork:

This stunning artwork was created by my cousin Camille of Mille.me (also on Facebook). She posted pictures of these paintings several months ago and I knew right away they would set the stage for the entire nursery (which I was still only dreaming about). I can't express enough how much I truly truly love these wonderful paintings she calls Buddhamals. Thank you Camille!!

The last few touches I added to the room included Daisy the giraffe (free through a friend, yippee) and a hand painted wall mural:

And finally, the last thing you see as you leave the room - a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson above the door:

"There was never a child so lovely,

but his mother was glad to get him to sleep."

Now I just need one more thing for the nursery but he won't be here until around December 22. I'm glad the room is finished though, one less thing to worry about as my belly grows and grows and grows!

UPDATE: I entered the Olympic Paint and Stain's Simply Done contest and wanted to include my entry photo on this blog post. The criteria was that a can of Olympic paint had to be in the photo (oh, and of course, that I used Olympic paint which was already done) so I set up "Mama paint" reading Goodnight Moon to "baby paint" on the reading chair.

Thank you for reading,
Julie

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