Abram's Nursery

Let me start by saying poor Paul.  Since Chloe's nursery was never fully finished, I had some big ambitions for the tiny room we were going to call the new nursery.  I wasn't going to half ass it this time around.  It all started with Baby Drew, my co-worker, Andrew's, new baby.  When we went to visit the baby we got a sneak peak of his beautiful nursery.  The nursery had a very cool faux wainscoting that Andrew had did by himself.  He claimed the process to be quite easy.

I figured, hey, my husband is handy, I'm sure he could crank this project out in a weekend.  But when your house was constructed in 1926 nothing is ever easy.  Our floors were slanted, the walls were bowed, and we didn't have good studs available on which to nail the boards.  Overall, it turned out to be a huge undertaking.  My Dad came down to assist, but it still took a whole day to get the boards on the walls. Here is the project in Phase I.

Now, one of the many problems Paul ran into was that the boards couldn't be nailed to the wall, but instead had to be screwed to the wall. This was okay since we were going to be painting the boards anyway, but this also meant that the screw holes would need to be filled with caulk. Paul filled all of the holes and lined every board with caulk. When the caulk dried it had sunk into the screw holes. So then Paul had to fill the holes with plaster, which then needed to be sanded. The boards and the entire room needed to be dusted and cleaned before he could paint. Here is the project in Phase II all cleaned up and ready for Phase III.

Complete with four beers on the window.

Phase III was paint.  Paul and I HATE painting, and since I couldn't help him the task was even more daunting.  First he had to prime the entire room.  A few days later he painted the bottom half of the room white.  He then painted the top half of the room tan, and then finally finished by repainting the ceiling white.  The painting process took him a few nights.

We decided to order replacement windows for the room.  The room is super tiny if you can't tell from the pictures, yet it has three windows and a door.  Yes, I said a door.  We think its purpose is for bringing large items into the home like mattresses and bed frames.  At least, that is what we use it for.  That and shooting squirrels with an air soft gun.  I couldn't think of a great way to cover the door, but decided to take one of the window coverings from our bedroom and use it over the door as if it were a window. 

Anyway, two of the windows had large cracks in them and were painted shut.  All of the windows are single pane, so you can imagine that the room is quite cold.  I spent a little extra for custom, cordless blinds.  Our windows are not a standard size so it is difficult to find a window covering on the cheap.  Regardless, I got a great deal on the blinds online.

Originally, I was thinking of a "little monster" theme based on a cute vinyl wall decal I found on Etsy, but when we finally got the room all painted I didn't think the theme fit.  We decided to do a woodland animal theme instead. 

I bought these prints from an Etsy shop.  The designs were so cute and perfect for the room.  I couldn't think of a way to recreate the idea without it looking like total crap so I spent the extra money to order the prints.  It took far to long to receive the prints, but I'm happy with them in the end. 

I have to admit that I sort of ripped off the idea for these little animal pictures from the same Etsy shop that I purchased the ABC and number prints.  We basically just redrew the images onto cardstock, cut them out, and glued them to more scrapbook paper.  We stuck them in a frame and whola!  We saved at least $60, and didn't have to wait a whole lifetime for them to ship.

We reused Chloe's changing table and replaced the pink changing pad cover with a navy cover. I purchased a few storage cubes from Target that can be reused later when we replace the changing table with toy storage. 

I didn't waste my money on a crib bedding set this time around.  Instead, I purchased two sheets from Target with the matching crib skirt.  My Mom made us a few blankets, and we are all set for bedding.  We reused the Target rug we had in the room previously, but worked very hard scrubbing it clean.  We have had it for nearly four years, and it had really seen better days. 

To say the closet in this room is small is an understatement.  Still, we tried to make the best of it by adding some storage cubes and baskets.  I also had Paul jam this tiny, old dresser into the closet for more storage.  It was a cheap alternative to buying custom closet organizers and looks just as good in my opinion.

Paul isn't a big hunter, but his dad is, and he donated these antlers to the cause.  I never thought I'd want deer antlers in my baby's nursery, but I thought it would be cute in this case.