Building Our Nest

When we were clearing out the nursery, I finally got around to actually measuring the dimensions of the room, the windows, doors, etc. So you can imagine my surprise at how wildly off I was when I created the previous floorplan for the nursery. Here’s what I had pulled out of my head:

This is how the room is in actuality:

It is actually much larger than I had thought and more square than rectangular. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the following things:

• We will be able to fit a rocking chair next to the crib against that wall
• There is room for an 8×10 rug rather than a 5×8
• Having just the far wall designated for built-in cabinets is plenty. Kelly convinced me that wrapping around the wall will just be more hassle than it’s worth and will inhibit opening the door all the way

Kelly has now gotten the skim coat on the ceiling. Next step, patching and sanding – then on to the window trim scraping!

Ok, I should probably give a few more details on the nursery inspiration board I made.

Colors, fabrics and inspiration board

The first thing I should mention is that we are planning on finishing this room from floor to ceiling. Like the majority of the rooms in our house, the ceiling has a “popcorn” texture which is just downright awful. We plan on scraping the ceiling, patching and painting it. We will also rip up the carpet and refinish the floors. The baseboard and window trim (which was most likely painted with lead-based paint and is flaking off) needs to be scraped and prepped for new paint. We will also need to replace a few broken or cracked panes of glass as well as re-caulk the rest of the panes in our almost 100-year old non-energy efficient, but gorgeous windows.

See this gorgeous yellow color?

This is what we have planned for the wall color. It is Glidden’s Canary Song, but we will most likely have it color matched at Benjamin Moore, which is the only paint Kelly will use. (I should say “use happily” as he has used other brands of paint before, but always with grumbling…) The cheery yellow color will be accented with these two bright fun colors:

These are Behr’s Peacock Feather and Bamboo Leaf, respectively, again we will color match them and use Benjamin Moore paint. The green will be for a beat up old dresser we bought off of Craigslist which has great bones. It will be the changing table and go along the wall to the right as you come in the door. Why buy a changing table when you can use an old dresser which has storage too? The blue color will show up in the back of these little nooks which were created when a previous owner took out a chimney (the previous fireplace was in the kitchen downstairs…) We will also trim out the front of those shelves, as they are a little unfinished.

The closet will most likely lose the door (otherwise there isn’t much room for the dresser on that wall) and have a curtain hung there instead. Hopefully we can get a new shelving system in that closet as well and paint the paneling – white probably, but who knows.

Oh, and that lovely teal blue color will also show up in the rug, which we hope to create with FLOR carpet tiles.

We chose all those bright fun colors from this great fabric, which will be the curtains:

That line of fabric has some other great coordinating prints, which you can see here:

We will use some of those fabrics for the closet curtain and crib skirt and probably some pillows or something too.

In order to get maximum darkness in this room with so many windows, we will also install some dark brown bamboo shades, which are from Home Depot. The shade of brown is to ground the room a bit more and to connect with the floor color as well, which will be a medium tone brown.

Let’s see, what else is there. Oh yes! The crib. That one is easy-peasy. IKEA’s clean lined inexpensive Gulliver crib. Simple is best, in our opinion.

The crib will go in this little nook:

We will also move one of our current living room couches (the one with the pull out bed) up to the nursery, slip-cover it in tan and put it in front of the long wall of windows.

You can see the very badly not-to-scale floor plan here:

Now, one of the biggest projects in this nursery plan (besides all the prep work of scraping the ceiling, trim, etc. which we hope to hire out…) is something that will most likely not get done before the baby comes. It’s that other section of wall to the left of the door. We want to design and build a whole wall and a half of built-in storage. Closets/storage is at a premium in this house and so adding some built-in storage would be a very good thing. Plus along that left hand wall by the door to the bathroom is an exposed heating duct. Not a great thing for a nursery, so we will enclose it within the built-ins. Oh, and the built-ins will all be painted a crisp white.

So, that’s the design plan in detail. What do you think?

I know, I know, we haven’t even finished up a bunch of old projects, much less blogged about the progress we’ve made – on the stairs, on the driveway gate… However, this project is very important and has a strict due date for finishing!

That’s right – a due date.

Baby Kellen will make his appearance on or about January 22, 2012, so we’ve got a nursery to create!

We have decided to turn the office/craft room into the nursery – it’s adjacent to the master bedroom through a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, so it really is the perfect spot for it. There’s no way I’m giving you all any pictures of the room in its current state (dumping ground for storage and a mess with office stuff and craft stuff), but here are some pictures from before we moved in:

(We’ve got some work to do on the windows and window trim, that’s for sure…)

(Looking towards the bathroom through to the master bedroom)

(The biggest closet in the house and cute little shelf area from where there once was a chimney)

I’ll go into detail in a further post about what exactly we are going to have to get done in this room (newsflash: it’s a LOT!) but here are two pictures for you to contemplate in the meantime.

Hopeful floorplan

Colors, fabrics and inspiration board

This color scheme is so happy and bright, and I chose it even before we knew we are having a boy. I think it works just as well for girls.

More to follow…

Sorry for the long gap in posting, folks. We have been working on some house projects, but just haven’t had the time to post what we’ve been up to. We have taken a bit of a break from the stairs for the moment in favor of working outside on some of the front yard landscaping. Kelly keeps reminding me that we need to get some outside projects done on the house while it’s still rather nice outside. We can work more on the stairs in air conditioned comfort during the unbearable Texas summer heat.

In preparation for writing up a huge gardening post, I dumped 600+ pictures off of the camera and in doing so I found some pictures I had taken of a quick little project we did in the upstairs master bath.

Now, please keep in mind, the upstairs master bath is a HUGE project in and of itself. The tub needs to be re-glazed, the tile (which looks like it was put on top of previous tile) was grouted and caulked in an alarmingly sloppy manner (actually which makes me curse the previous owners under my breath whenever I see it… which is every morning, so I should probably work on my attitude towards them…) and needs to be replaced at some point, the window well needs to be rebuilt and perhaps the window replaced, the lighting needs to be changed out (or added in the case of the ceiling, where there are a couple of old cloth wires hanging down…), the whole room needs to be painted…

I know, I know. I’m making it sound like the room is a horror show. In some ways it really seems that way, but I have to remember that it is still very functional and we live with it just fine.

Anyway, since we moved in, we had been living with a cheap-o vinyl shower curtain:

I liked the subtle leafy pattern, but that was about it. Those kinds of shower curtains always get dirty and ugly and Kelly would always complain about how he hated accidentally brushing up against the curtain while he was in the shower. It made him feel clammy and claustrophobic. So I went looking for a nice replacement. I found a “hotel weight” shower liner for only a couple of dollars at Marshall’s and then this pretty fabric curtain at Bed Bath & Beyond:

I liked the neutral palette, the leafy pattern and the pops of color from the birds. While I was perusing the aisles at BB&B, I had an inspiration: I wondered if they had those awesome curved shower bars like you can find in hotels. And they did! Since I had a pile of those ubiquitous 40% coupons, the new shower hardware came home with me along with the curtain.

Before I came home, however, I texted Kelly and told him that I had a surprise for him, but that it meant a project he had to do… Fortunately, he was so happy when imagining how his elbows wouldn’t touch the clammy vinyl that he was happy to get it all installed. Which first meant taking down the old shower bar:

Yeah, that bar had been there a loooooong while. And now you also get a closeup on the horror that is the grouting job. *Deep breaths* (Working on that attitude…)

So Kelly uninstalled the old rod in order to install the new curved one. He did have one hiccup during installation, as he first installed the new bar right in the place of the old one before realizing that the “cap” on the end of the rod was larger than the footprint of the old rod, so it would have to be moved. But it didn’t take that long to get the new shower curtain rod up and our lovely new curtain in place!

Kelly working on the installation

The curved rod

The new curtain!

Basically, this project gave me the idea for how to add a bit more of a creative touch to this bathroom. I want to paint the walls a nice light tan color and pick up on the rest of the bright colors in the curtain in through towels and accessories. I also want to paint an old chandelier (from a thrift store or the Habitat ReStore) one of the bright colors and hang it from the ceiling where there is currently a bunch of wires and nothing else… Stay tuned for that project…

You might have noticed this little detail in Kelly’s sketch from the last post:

That is not something just the future when we build the fireplace – it exists now, because I made it!

I had been wanting to keep our firewood in something other than the uber-ugly plastic milk crate it existed in all winter, and got the idea to get a little crafty with a $15 galvanized tub from my local thrift store. (And when I say “local,” I mean 6 blocks away, local…)

First, I got Kelly to find a nice modern, but not too cold, font and print out the word “Firewood.” Then, after cleaning off the outside of the tub, I used a spray-adhesive to arrange the letters around one side. It was a good thing that adhesive was labeled “repositionable” because it took me 3 tries to get the letters to fit just right.

For a little more detail, I masked off one section of the tub with painter’s tape.

Then I started priming and painting. Forgive these next few pictures – I started this project in the late afternoon and by the time I got to painting, it had gotten dark. I was working in the backyard by the glow of the floodlight.

Then, when everything was dry, I removed the letters and the painter’s tape and had a cool new bin for firewood!

And here it is with wood in it, next to our (yet to be renovated) fireplace.

No new news on the stair project today, folks. We’re still working away at it. But what I do have for you today is a brilliant little sketch Kelly whipped up over lunch on Sunday. On a napkin. (I kid you not.)

It’s things like these that amaze me about my husband. (Forgive me for bragging for a second…) He is an incredibly talented designer. I’ve seen his talent first-hand with his graphic design, but I always seem to forget that he has a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design (basically a pre-architecture degree), which means his designs are more than just 2-D.

You see, he has this knowledge and amazing skill in how to dream up something, sketch it and then build it. (Like all the props and scenery he used to build when he worked in theater, or the cupcake tower from our wedding, or the spice rack that is half-completed in our kitchen right now, among many other things.)

Which is why I’m so excited about what could happen in our living and dining rooms. Just look at that napkin sketch!

The top sketch is of three walls in our dining room, and what it could look like with a wall treatment of either board and batten, wainscot, or some kind of paneling. (We had just seen the episode of Sarah’s House where she puts paneling in a dining room and then fabric wall paper above it. I’m not so sure about the fabric wallpaper, but some kind of pattern isn’t out of the question for that dining room.)

The bottom two sketches are Kelly’s design for a renovated fireplace. Chunky wood mantel! Stone facing up to the ceiling! I’m so excited I’m using lots of exclamation points!! I’m also excited because we decided that unlike the dining room wall treatment, this is a project we want to tackle this year. Let’s just say we want to have a fireplace mantel by Christmas so we don’t have to hang stockings on the bookshelves again…

I recently discovered a cool tool called Polyvore that lets you clip images from around the web to build design boards. So here is my idea for the downstairs bathroom in visual form. I’m hoping to get a lot of work on the bathroom done the weekend after next. (Not this weekend, because it’s our anniversary, and we’re not going to be in town!)

Anyway, what do you think?