A Nursery Facelift

Having a “Where in the world does the time go?” moment here. I was just trying to figure out when I last posted pictures of the nursery. Turns out it was my second ever post, back on April 5, 2009, a few days before Alethea’s due date and three weeks before she was actually born. Back then the nursery looked like this:

Nursery Sherwin Williams Composed Globe MobileThe starting point for the room was the globe mobile over the crib. The color scheme (Nomadic Desert and Composed by Sherwin Williams) seemed cute enough for a nursery, while not being gender specific. My thought being that we might have a boy someday and it would be nice not to have to re-do the whole nursery when and if that happened.

Of course, our second baby was a girl, so not much changed for Lydia other than a new paint job on the dresser and a few new accessories:

dresser sherwin williams lagoonThis time though, it’s a boy, which means this nursery needs a few more changes. Although part of me would love to toss everything out the window and start over from scratch (I’d definitely pick a different crib if I could go back and do it all over again), there is no way the frugal part of me is going to spend the money, and if I’m honest with myself, I know I really have a million more important things to do than repaint the whole room.

So with that in mind, we will be keeping all the major pieces in the room (the crib, chair, dresser, bookshelf, changing table, lamp, mobile, and wall colors are all staying), and I’ll be making the look a little more “boy” with a touch of navy blue, olive green, and some new accessories. Here’s the mood board I cooked up:

Baby Boy Transportation Travel Room NurseryAnd here’s the to-do list that goes with it:

1) Buy/Make Art
I’m totally in love with these prints from PaperLlamas on etsy. You get to pick your four colors and four vehicles and they custom print them for you. I think they are completely and utterly perfect for the room, but given that we have to buy a new-to-us car before the baby arrives (one that can accommodate three car seats), budget is going to play major role in whether I go with these prints or try to DIY something similar by painting over the canvases that are already in the room. I guess we’ll see how much we end up spending on the car.

2) Paint Dresser
I think this will be the fourth time in my life I’ve painted this particular piece of furniture, but I’m really excited about the idea of an olive green dresser in the room like the one pictured above. Current color I’m leaning towards is SW Rural Green (bottom right on the mood board).

3) Paint Bookshelf
There is a small bookshelf next to the rocking chair (you can see the top of it in the bottom right corner of the first photo). The paint job has gotten really beat up over the last two children, so I’m planning on painting it again. Maybe olive green too, or perhaps SW Commodore, which is the navy blue color on the mood board.

4) Make Curtains
The nursery has a blackout roller shade and a valance over the window, but it has never had curtains. I go back and forth on whether or not I think curtains are okay in a nursery, since I do worry about them getting pulled down on someone’s head, but we’ve got floor length curtains in almost every other room in the house and none of them have come down yet. That and the fact that I found the adorable airplane fabric on the bottom left of the mood board means that this time around, there will be curtains!

5) Accessorize!
I don’t have plans for too many accessories, but I do know that I will be buying and painting paper mache letters to spell out Bob’s name over the changing table. And maybe some other car/train/plane/truck/map items will work their way in if I get inspired. Oh and Peter’s mom and I are already making plans for the quilt that she’s going to make!

So there you go, that’s what I’ve been working on lately. What have you been up to?

14 thoughts on “A Nursery Facelift

  1. Love the curtain fabric and wall art. It says all boy I’m waiting to see the finished room. I am getting ready for a mini Red Hat convention in Baltimore. I hope the weather gets better by the end of the month when I go. We’ve had fresh snow just about every week. Ice storm last night and freezing rain. I did see my spring flowers coming up. I hope that is a good sign. What did the fox say. Well the ground hog said six more weeks of winter. Have you picked a name yet, or is he going to be Junior?

    • There are very few times when I’m picking stuff for a room and it says to me, “Yes, I am exactly what you want,” but the art and fabric were both so right for the room. Have fun at your Red Hat convention. I hope our weather gets better too. I can’t believe you have flowers coming up. There’s at least three feet of snow on the ground here. We have a name tentatively picked out, but we aren’t telling yet in case we change our minds when we actually see him. He won’t be Peter Junior though!

  2. Oh Elise, how I envy your creativity! I’m wanting to incorporate the paint color in your main floor bathroom into my downstairs bathroom (the one you painted), but I have absolutely no idea how to do it. Someday…………

    • Thanks, Jo. I’d say look for some artwork that has the taupe and gray you like and see what other colors are mixed in there. That might give you a jumping off point for adding more colors to your bathroom.

  3. I think this is going to be great! As far as the prints go, if you find some pictures you like you could decopage them onto the current canvases. Im sure you already thought of that ;)

    • Thanks so much, Kammie! I hope it’s going to be great. I think it could be if I pull it off. It’s so much easier to cut and paste pictures from the internet than to transfer it to a real room. Still, I’m pretty psyched about it. I did think about decoupage, but I’m not sure where to find very inexpensive prints in the right colors. It is an idea though, thanks for problem solving for me!

  4. It would be cute to paint over the canvas art in there. you could paint a simple car front and on the license plate you could put his name!!!! Just print out what you want, and then try to recreate it with paint and paintbrush!

    what a great start! It’s going to be perfect for him no matter how it turns out!

    • I love the idea of his name on the license plate! Thanks, Jenny! I may end up trying to recreate some clip art, but I know I won’t get anywhere near the level of detail on the prints, which I do love. I think you’re right though, it will be cute either way, so I’ll take comfort in that.

  5. you could also look for an old coffee table book of cars, etc. you should be able to find full sized prints in these, they would just need to be framed.

    Watch the olive color, greens can be very decieving especially when next to blue. Trust me the current color combo on our house was an epic fail. Greens will take on dramtically different hues in large scale application then they do in a small sample size.

    • You know, I hadn’t even thought of looking for a coffee table book. I’m not sure what the chances are of finding pictures with the right colors, but I’ll definitely keep my eyes out while I’m thrifting. Thanks for the tip, Leah.

      Greens are tricky, for sure. I remember the first time I picked a color for our family room. I thought it was going to be really nice, but it was Oscar the Grouch green! My second color looked almost totally gray on the strip, but on the wall, it definitely reads green, so I think the moral of the story is, with green tint, a little goes a long ways. Fortunately, I’m only planning on painting the dresser and maybe a few smaller accents in Bob’s room, so I don’t think it will overwhelm the space (fingers crossed). Also, I’m going to wait to see the fabric in person (just ordered it yesterday) before I finalize color selections. I absolutely cannot wait for it to come, but 3-8 business days after cutting means it will probably be a couple weeks. Uggg!

      Are you guys planning on repainting in the spring?

      • yes there are just a few green columns and the painter has to finish the other items they did not get to before the temps got too low…so again in the spring we will have painters and landscapers galore…we plan to have a house warming once all of these items are done.

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