Nursery Progress: Chapter 3

We have been working HARD at our new house. I can't believe how much we have accomplished in one month! Specifically on our master bedroom and P's room. I will post some before and after pictures of the master bedroom soon. We still need to hang some things on the wall and move out a workshop full of tools that is set up next to our bed :) BUT I do have a nursery update.

This is what the nursery looked like before we moved in.

This is the old owners stuff. I am not sure if you can tell by the picture, but the walls are dingy, off-white and the trim around the windows and floor is mustard. (Yes, mustard. It's everywhere in our house. We think the old owners must have gotten a deal on mustard paint.) BUT, what Brian and I saw when we walked into the room was the POTENTIAL for a beautiful nursery for our first born. We saw the three pretty windows and how light flowed into the room. When you look out the windows, it feels like you are in a tree canopy since it is on the 2nd floor. Then we saw this:

Chaos? Yes, but really it's a huge walk-in closet that Preston can grow into with a window inside.

The first thing we tackled was the paint. Here is daddy-to-be putting on the first coat. You can get a good look at the trim all over our house in this pic :)

We even had a little help from our friends the Pela's :) I cannot thank Robyn and JM enough for helping us with P's room. They are like family to us! I am sure JM will love that I posted this pic of him, haha.

As for the color, we went with Benjamin Moore's Gray Horse. I wrote a little post on the paint we chose - Natura. Turns out it is awesome! It has no smell to it at all, and since it is chemical free, I could even help paint the nursery. For the trim and windows, we chose Ben Moore's White Dove. It is white with just a hint of tan to it, although it looks very white in person. We also painted the ceilings and the closet a basic white to freshen everything up. We are big Benjamin Moore fans now and plan on using it throughout.

I am going to wait to show you the total picture when we are finished (which should be very soon!), but here are a few accessories we've picked out for the nursery.

The first is the rug... this was a tough one. In fact, we even lived with a rug from Capel Rugs in there for a day before deciding that it wasn't what we wanted. Finally, we decided on this one from Pottery Barn Kids in a 7 x 9 in navy.

We love the idea of gray, yellow and navy as the prominent colors for the nursery. We'll also be throwing in small amounts of green. These colors blend with our plans for the rest of the house. We liked this rug, because we thought he could grow into it. It isn't too baby, but it is still soft enough to play on and crawl around on.

Now for fabrics. I didn't want a traditional bed-in-a-bag for the crib. I relied on the efforts of my mom, who is an expert sewer to make us custom bedding for the crib. On a side note, it means a lot that she did this for us. It makes his crib so special and we can't thank her enough. For the crib skirt, we used this fabric from Ikea and I really love it!

We put it with a white crib sheet, a white super soft bumper, and a monogrammed blanket to hang over the side. It's perfect and I love it. Every night I look at his crib and I can't wait to have him in there!

Then we are using other miscellaneous Ikea fabrics for projects like an ottoman, window treatments, pillows, etc. Here are a few of those:

Next are picture frames from Ikea to brighten up the gray walls... we went with the navy, sky blue, and white.

Also, I have to say, what did I do before Etsy came along? Thanks to that website, we have found lots of cute things for P's room. Here are a few of them...

I didn't want a traditional mobile for his room, so what is more fun than these hanging from the ceiling above the crib?! For the colors, we went with white, gray and yellow. They are SO FUN and are much more interesting than a regular mobile.

We really wanted fun art to dress up the gray walls, and when I found these on etsy, I could not resist. I mean, how sweet is that?

Next up, I found this Italian alphabet poster that seemed to fit the color scheme perfectly. I love the idea of hanging this in P's room, because he has a little Italian in him and I studied Italian as a music major in college.

Some of the things I am most excited about are the very meaningful pieces we are adding to his nursery. We are hanging a piece of art that hung in Brian's nursery, family pictures, a few quotes that I have always loved, and lots of other items to make it more personal.

His closet has also gotten a huge makeover and we have some fun plans for it, since it is soooo big. I did five loads of laundry this weekend for Preston and put away all his little clothes, blankets, and burp clothes. I set up his changing table with all the stuff needed to change diapers and keep him clean :) While Brian was at the Liberty Bowl cheering on the Dawgs (pathetic game), I even put together his Little Lamb Infant Seat. It is so precious and I can see him snuggling in it.

It is all coming together so nicely and we should be done very soon so stay tuned!