The Nursery

When we moved into our home, we loved the color of the paint throughout.  It was a lot of tan, but at least it was tan, and not some other crazy color.  But one room in the house was different.  And it was a chocolate brown with a purple undertone.  Blech.  It looked good with what the previous owner had in the room:

But this room was slated to be the nursery, and try as I might, I couldn't come up with anything that would allow me to keep the dark brown with a new baby.  Everything I thought of didn't appeal to me and I had a hard time visualizing a baby being in there.  So we decided to paint it.  After much debate about what to do, we decided to paint it a cream color and build some board and batten for the bottom half.

First we ran to Home Depot and bought everything we thought we would need.  Then we went again.  And again - for all the things we didn't know we'd need.  We started with a few paint samples.  I painted a few samples around the room and looked at them for a couple days in the different lights.  Then we got going.

First we removed the base boards since we would be putting on new ones to match the board and batten. Then we did two coats of primer where the cream paint would be going.  After that we painted two coats of the cream paint.  (I apologize for some of the awful photos.  I was inadvertently in the wrong setting for like 4 days...oops.)

In this photo, you can see the other two colors of paint we debated between.  They are to the left of the closet near the floor.  I was going for a light cream color and those two were too orange/pink.  We didn't paint the bottom half of the room because it would be covered with the board and batten anyway.

Emerson was a great helper the entire time.  He just loved to carry around the tape measure or scoot along with me while I painted.

After the paint had dried for the recommended amount of time, we got started on the board and batten.  Bill and Will measured and cut the backboards, including holes for the outlets and the lowered part of the window.  We secured it to the wall with both glue and nails in the studs.

Then they cut the bottom boards which would act as the floor boards.  Apparently the outside corner of the room is 1 inch lower than the kitty corner, so making them level was kind of ridiculous looking.  So they just pushed it as close to the carpet as possible to avoid having gaps.  The top boards were made to be level, and they sat on top of the backboard.

 Then came the fun part.  Ok, not really.  It was more like the tricky measure-twice-cut-once part: the battens.  Because the floor boards weren't level, each batten could be a different size than the one next to it.  So we measure where each batten would go and then cut them all.

I wanted the battens to be as close to evenly spaced as possible, but more than that I wanted them to look evenly spaced.  Because of the outlets and the varying lengths of the walls, we couldn't make them the same spacing on each wall.  So I just started taping them up according to what looked good.  I would shift them a bit to the left or right depending on how close they were to the corners or outlets.  It took a couple hours, but I got them to look pretty good, if I do say so myself. After we finalized their placement, we used a nail gun to permanently place them.  They would also be caulked and painted later for added security.

Bill switched out the off-white outlets and plates to the bright white ones.  We turned off the power to the room for safety hence the lamp via extension cord.

After all that was completed, we cleaned up all the power tools and said goodbye to Bill and Patty.  They were such a huge help getting this project going, but they had to go home before it was finished.  Will and I finished the caulking, priming, and painting of the board and batten.

First we filled all the nail holes and any other blemishes with some spackling.  I sanded everything to prep it for primer, then primed everything twice.

After one coat of primer:

After two coats of paint, we were finally done.  Again, sorry for the bad pictures.

Once all the work was done, I touched up a few areas and then it was finished.  It was so great.  And light!  I loved how much bigger it felt because it was so bright instead of dark and crampy.  Ahhh....it was a breath of fresh air!

And now for some photos of the finished product all decorated and baby-ified.

This is the painting that my sweet sister Mariah painted for us.  I asked her to make something for the baby's room that was abstract and had lots of swishes all over.  I purchased the canvas and supplies for her and let her go at it.  She came up with this magnificent work of art that I absolutely love.  It is perfect and brings a blast of color to the space.  Isn't it fantastic?  She is phenomenal.

Tangent: I also used it for the backdrop for our baby announcements.  It was just what I had in mind for the announcement and I'm so glad it worked out for the shoot.  Photo credit goes to my other genius sister Jenna.  She was kind enough to come over a couple times and shoot with my crazy requests in mind.  Here's how the announcement turned out:

Anyway, back to the nursery.  I had hoped to reuse the bedding that Emerson used as a baby, but it was brown and tan and white and didn't go as well in the room as I had thought it would.  So I purchased new white bedding that ended up being just refreshing and clean.  Love it.

Since we didn't find out the gender of our baby until she was born, very little decorating was done until the little miss arrived. I took some pictures of the gender-neutral nursery.  Most of them were obsolete once I decorated for a girl, but this one was one to keep.  I meant to take a picture of the glass table, and got a sweet shot my baby belly. This is a favorite.

I had all these frames on hand and just filled them with what I thought would fit nicely in her room.  The two blue ones on the left are some I've had since I was a little girl.  My gram and gramp gave me the "My Three White Dresses" poem (click here and scroll down to read it) and my mom helped me make the whale cross-stitch art when I was about 8.  It says, "Big or small, short or tall, don't forget God loves us all."  The little shoes are from when I was a baby.  I just Krazy glued them to a piece of gray scrapbook paper and put them in a shadow box frame.  The rose was painted by my amazing cousin Kim, who has her own studio in Montana and paints all sorts of amazing scenes.  I made the gradient art out of paint chip samples, and the little orange one on the far right is a postcard we got in Nashville, TN, on our "Tour of the South" trip.  We got it at a little place called the Hatch Show Print.  

 

The chest was my Grammie's cedar chest that I inherited when she passed away a few years ago.  It has been well-maintained and smells amazing inside.  Cedar...mmmm :)

I use the baskets for the clean cloth diapers.  Here is my cute wet bag that houses the dirty ones until I wash them.

We purchased this gray and brushed nickle fan from LampsPlus.com when it was on sale.  It ties in nicely with the silver clock and the glass table.

And now here's a before and after just to show the difference when all is said and done.