project nursery

Nurseries are a lot of work, and I'm not even the pregnant one. I give tons of credit to those of you who can actually do all of that work with a little one growing inside you.
Friday was dedicated to cleaning out the room. What is now the nursery was basically a "catch all their junk" room for the last 3 years. It is seriously amazing how much crap they accumulated in 3 years. We collected countless contractor bags filled with donations and garbage. They also sent 3 or 4 totes full of stuff up into the attic. It was crazy how much stuff came out of the room. But once it was (almost) empty, we had a plain room to decorate for Branson. At that point Jess and I went to home depot to buy all the supplies we'd need to transform the room from extra space to a baby boy's nursery. We bought 2 1/2 gallons of paint, 28 feet of window trim, 34 feet of chair rail, a couple roller pads and tray liners.

Then it was time for miss preggers to sit down and put her feet up while I got to work. I did a ton of taping and then started painting. She wanted the bottom half of the room blue and the top half tan with a white chair rail around the room. She also wanted all of the wood trim to be painted white. We also added trim to the two windows in the room and a chair rail. As a side note, most of the windows in her house have no molding around them. Is that normal? Her house is a cape cod from the 50's. We thought it was weird. The windows in the living room have trim but that is it. She's planning on adding trim as they update around the house room by room. Branson's room was the first to get updated!

I painted the blue on Friday night. I actually got two coats on before heading home and going to sleep.

When I got back to her house on Saturday morning, after she had a restless night of sleep, she decided that she wanted the chair rail moved up about an inch to be even with the window frame instead of below it like we had originally planned. Luckily that was easy enough to fix. I took off the tape and just painted about an inch more all the way around the room. Then I taped the ceiling and it was time to start painting the tan.

The room was bright orange when we started, so adding the more toned down colors was a huge change.
Once the blue and tan were done, it was time to start painting the trim and heaters. This was a much bigger headache than I anticipated. It took a very long time. Once I got done with the trim, I went home and slept like a log. This was a lot of work.

Luckily, it only took 3 coats(!) of paint!! Then Sunday morning it was time to get going on the window molding and the chair rail. Since I'm afraid of the nail gun and circular saw, my brother in law Dan and cousin in law Gordon came over to help with that. My role here was mostly telling them if it was even and holding it while they nailed it up.

Then it was time to clean. We had swept and wiped everything down when we cleaned out the room, but that wasn't even close to enough cleaning. I swept and mopped and scrubbed the windows and the floors. I cleaned deeper than I think I've ever cleaned my own house. I hung up the curtain rods, for which they don't have curtains yet - I'm making them as soon as Jess picks out the fabric she likes. Finally it was time to put together the little bit of furniture they have. Putting the crib together made it real. I also put together a little drawer chest they have for his stuff. They're waiting for Dan's mom to bring over the glider they got them for Christmas. Her shower is April 28, so I'm sure I'll have more pictures to share once they get a bit more baby stuff. I made some canvas art tonight that I'm going to hang up across from the crib and Jess decorated the letters of his name to hang above the crib.
So here it is - the final product!

The crib. Since they don't have bedding yet, there is a Disney World throw blanket on there.
Also, baby's first Mickey is in the bed.

Stuffed chicky and a lamp waiting for a shade.

The view from the door. The glider will go in the corner next to the chest of drawers.

Obviously curtains will make a huge difference. His name, Branson, will go above the crib.

His changing table will go where that fan is and we are hanging a clock up on the wall to the right of the window.

The three canvas art I made are going on this wall. The mirrors there are doors to the closet.