Nursery Inspiration & Progress

My daughter and son-n-law asked me to help them design their nursery.  Once they found out they were having a boy it was time to look for inspiration for the room.  I am not into “themed” rooms, and thank goodness neither is my daughter.  So I was trying to help her find some items that she liked and bring them all together without looking “themed”.

I first was showing my daughter all the beautiful pictures out in blog land of the board and batten that everyone is doing.   Like this one

image from here

And of course she feel in love with it.  Then I started thinking…which I really should of thought of before I opened my big mouth and started showing my daughter the board and batten.  They just put brand new baseboards in when they did their renovation 6 months ago, and those would have to be re-done if not replaced.  Plus, this room doesn’t have a closet in it, and for now they are going to forgo putting one in since a baby really only needs an armoire for the first couple of years.  So if we put board and batten up now even replacing the baseboards, it would have to be torn down for the future closet.  So board and batten wasn’t such a good idea, oops.

Now I had to come up with a  plan “b”

I saw these two images on Potterybarnkids and an idea came to me

I liked the idea of the squared edge chair rail with the pegs in the first picture {in the far left corner of the picture}.  Then I was drawn to the stripes on the wall in the second picture.

When I design, if i can, I like to add depth to a room either with wallpaper, unusual wall tiles or molding.  Just painting the walls is a great option, but is so one dimensional, so I really strive to go beyond just paint.    I was trying to come up with one other element for the walls that would fit their budget.

So, I thought by bringing these two Pottery Barn inspiration elements together it would be a nice alternative to the board and batten that was axed.  Now that we had a plan, it was time to move forward and start on the room.

They already had purchased this rug from Pottery Barn Outlet for the room,  so it was our starting point for color inspiration.

For the walls, we decided to use swiss coffee, a light blue that matches the rug and add a navy blue as an accent.Sherwin Williams Blissful Blue and Indigo

Here is how my idea turned out so far.   The chair rail sits about 5 feet off the floor.  I decided to add a small shelf on top of the chair rail just on one wall, you can kind of see it in the first picture {the two white blobs are the blades of the ceiling fan going, it was hot the day I took this picture}.  I thought this would be a great way to display art, small accessories or stuffed animals without taking up space on to of  the furniture pieces.  Once we get all the furniture in the room, we are going to strategically add a couple of pegs here and there on the chair rail around the room. {the painting, chair rail and shelf were done by a contractor, so we can’t take credit for the actual work}

Shannon and Nate hadn’t found any ready-made bedding that they liked, so I was started looking for fabrics to custom make the bedding.   Nate, my son-n-law,  is a HUGE baseball fan, and would love to do the baby’s room in nothing but baseball, but my daughter isn’t too keen on that idea. I thought this fabric I found by Dwellstudio at Joann’s looked like baseballs and was the perfect color of blue.  Sort of bringing in the baseball theme but in a subtle way.

I am going to make a flat roman shade for the window out of the “baseball” fabric.

I brought this storage ottoman over to their house to try

It was one of those pieces of furniture that kept getting moved around my house because I didn’t have a place for it.  So it was a win/win situation for all of us when it fit perfectly in the room.

We feel in love with this fabric DwellStudio Zoo Pal in blue, also at Joann’s. I put the zoo print on the bottom half of this storage ottoman.  The brown velvet pulls out some of the brown in the fabric, so this adds another accent color in the room.   I took off the casters and painted the legs white. Then I sewed the fabric into one long rectangle and then stapled it to the inside and underneath of the ottoman .  This way the new fabric can easily be removed {well if you call removing a ton of staples easy work} and the existing brown velvet will still be in tack.

I am going to attempt to make a crib skirt out of this fabric as well.  Crossing my fingers it won’t be that hard.  But this is probably the only two areas we will using the zoo print, over doing it with this fabric will get too “themed” feeling.  Shannon would also like to bring in some vintage children prints and vintage style to the room as well. {maybe we can find an old vintage baseball glove for Nate to put on the shelf}

They ordered this crib from JC Penny.

They bought a white armoire off of Craig’s list and I added these cute knobs to dress it up. {I know, the whales are making me look like I am a liar and using an animal “theme”, but they were so darn cute, on sale and the perfect blue, I couldn’t pass them up!}

Then there is this dresser that they got for free from a family member, they are going to use as the changing table.  It has really deep drawers for storage, and is very solid.

The wood on this dresser is just beautiful, and we wanted to keep it in its natural wood tone. It looks really nice against the blue rug and walls and it picks up the tones of the wood floors.  But it needed some TLC.   We hand sanded it down but there were scratches and water spots that weren’t coming out.

I didn’t know how to fix this, so I contacted the queen, the queen of furniture transformations that is,  Marian, from Miss Mustard Seed.  She gave me a great tip that worked wonders.  I can’t wait to show you how it turned out and what I used on it! That Marian, she is one savoy person when it comes to fixing up furniture.

So slowly but surely it is coming along.  There is still lots to do, well lots of sewing for me to do, and I am not a seamstress so this might take awhile.  But I have plenty of time before the baby comes in July.