As I said earlier, 2011 was a really big year for us. I found out I was pregnant in January, Mac was starting his business, and we bought a new house. We closed on it December, 30th 2010. So literally, we started off the new year with a new house.We got a really great deal on it, but it was a fixer-upper.
This room is where the nursery is now, but the carpet has already been pulled up:
Carpet was all throughout the house: in the bedrooms, the hallway, the dining room, and even down the stairs. The kitchen had 2 layers of beautiful vinyl. There was also wallpaper in all the bathrooms and white brick wallpaper throughout the whole kitchen!! White brick? Wallpaper?? ...YES.
Since we were moving in so quickly and wanted to get the most necessary things done before we moved in, I had to quickly pick a paint color which we were going to use throughout the whole house. I ended up choosing Manchester Tan by Ben Moore:
Below is the nursery with finished floors (stained in Coffee), painted walls, and freshly hung chandelier:
As you can see, I decided to put the
headboard that I made in the nursery rather than using it as a kitchen banquette. The bench is actually a cedar chest that can hold toys and can also provide extra seating.
My goal with the nursery was to make it gender neutral. I am ALL about being practical....let's make our money go a long way. I love to buy shirts or dresses that will go year-round it just makes my day...very practical. Anywho, so I was thinking greys, tans, whites and then add a pop of blue with pillows and such.
We also painted our trim in Manchester Tan semi-gloss, but it was this newer kind of trim paint that is Latex/water-based that CAN go on top of oil-based trims. My fellow brother-in-law told me about this paint. It makes it so much easier to clean your brushes and when you are in a hurry, like we were, it was VERY helpful.
Mac and I, throughout the years, have accrued a hodge-podge of family furniture. Here are some pine drawers that I stripped, sanded, and stained. I stained them grey to go with the whole neutral theme and it worked out perfect because they matched the curtains beautifully!
I splurged on a beautiful chandelier from Three Sheets in Homewood and then bought some cute door knobs that were on sale from Anthropologie. The set of drawers below I have had since High School. Again, a hodge-podge! But they work great in the closet!
I painted the angel painting above the headboard and bought the crib bedding, curtains, and two cute pillows from
www.laylagrayce.com all from the Pom Pom collection. It was helpful to have the hook-up from a friend and receive everything 50% off!!
I knew I wanted bookshelves in the nursery, so I sketched a little drawing of what I was thinking and handed it to my granddad, Poppop. He is so talented in carpentry! I wanted them on either side of the window, but also far enough apart that one day a King bed could fit in between them. The bottom shelf would come out a little further than the rest, so that one day it could be used as an end table. As far as the height of the shelves, I didn't want them all to be the same. The bottom shelf would be higher than the rest, so that you could put a cute lamp in there one day.
Poppop built the majority of the shelves at home, and then brought them in sections to the house to install. He brought his little machine to cut the molding to make look as built-in book shelves.
Mac has become quite the handy man since we have moved in this house. I never knew he was until we bought this fixer-upper! He put new light switches throughout the whole house, which quickly "updated" every room. Mac even installed a dimmer light switch in the nursery and in our bedroom.
These pictures are not very good, but they are all I have! Below is an Instagram picture of the nursery with another one of my paintings. The little blue bird gave a POP of blue! You can also see the drawers that I stained grey and the little changing table edge that Poppop built for the top of those drawers.
Here it is pretty much finished. The only thing I was waiting on was the slip cover for the glider, but you get the idea! The rug is from Home Decorators collection. I think it was only $139, and I found a promo code online just by Google searching and that cut out the cost of the shipping. It's super soft and fuzzy and I have loved it, except I find white fuzz balls throughout the WHOLE house.
Other pictures are posted
here... On my sister-in-law's blog!
Nighty night!
