You always hear people talk about "preparing" for their child's arrival. Let me tell you, there is nothing you can do to prepare for a child. After reading tons of books about breastfeeding vs formula, cloth vs disposable diapers, the 5 S's, and the most important question of all...to have or not to have an epidural! I finally decided enough was enough, and I was just going to "wing it" as a new mom. And, that would be why I only just finished my son's nursery two months after his birth! I have to say that it is my favorite room in the house, probably because it's the only one that feels complete.
I started planning Marshall's nursery before I even knew if he was a boy or a girl. I was shopping at Kirkland's with my Mother-in-Law at Easter, and found this adorable rabbit lamp! I fell in love with it at once, and it reminded me of one of my favorite stories as a little girl, The Velveteen Rabbit. I decided that would be my nursery theme and got started!
I knew I wanted the walls to be grey, because I think grey is the perfect neutral color. I just had to figure out which grey I was going to choose. I thought (key word here is thought!) I had the perfect gray picked out, and purchased 2 gallons of Benjamin Moore paint. I heard it was the best for nurseries because it has zero odor, and being the good mother that I am, I wanted only the best for my baby! Well, as the story goes, Jason stayed up until 2:00 am one morning to surprise me by cutting in the paint at the ceiling and baseboards. I'm still not sure if he did that to surprise me, or because he knew I would get paint all over the ceiling, and he would end up on the latter repainting the ceiling any way! I walked in the room that morning and realized the color was all wrong. It was too dark for a nursery. One thing I have learned from dealing with paint is that you can always go back to the store and have them make your paint darker, but they cannot lighten the color for you. So, it was back to the drawing board and the paint store for us. I finally decided on Benjamin Moore's London Fog.
Now, I had the base for my nursery - gray, neutral walls and a theme - The Velveteen Rabbit. Here's a list of projects we completed to make the nursery perfect!
We took a vintage (of course!) dresser, and painted it, distressed it and waxed it. Then added a changing pad on top, and we have our very own custom changing table.
The wall above the changing table was looking a bit bare, so I asked Jason to make a shelf for me. He took a couple of pieces of barn wood and added the two wooden brackets I painted to match the dresser. The easiest project we've ever done!
Next on our list was a crib. I started off falling in love with these two cribs from Restoration Hardware. With $1,000 price tags though, I knew I needed to keep looking. After scouring Craigslist, Babies R Us, Buy Buy Baby and Pottery Barn I thought I would never find a crib I loved.
The canvases above the crib I have had for 3 years. I kept wanting to use them in our master bedroom, but I never could decide what to paint on them. I'm so glad I didn't use them now. I saw a tutorial on making your own chevron print on one of my favorite blogs, Dear Lillie. I then used Mod Podge to apply the pictures I took from The Velveteen Rabbit book.
After hanging them on the wall it was still missing something. That's when I decided to add the name sign above them. Jason, being the super crafty husband that he is, took a few pieces of barn wood (my new favorite thing!) and created this great sign for me. I just used a wooden letter from Hobby Lobby along with some stencil letters to create Marshall's sign.
The final piece we added to Marshall's nursery was this bookcase that Jason built. We had it sitting in our guest room, but it was nothing to look at. I never gave it a second thought. Jason brought it home from work one day because they were going to throw it away. He said he would do something to it to make it look nice for our guest room. Well, like my canvases, we never started that project until we decided we needed a bookshelf for the nursery. I found the feet at Lowe's, and Jason had the crown molding left over from another job. He worked his carpentry magic on it, and this is what we came out with! Isn't it beautiful? I wish I had a before picture. I'm sure Jason has one somewhere. If I find one, I will post the before, so you can really see the transformation on this piece.
