How We Put Together the Nursery

I received another birthday party invitation from little man's school buddy the other day, and I realized how his buddies' birthdays are around April-June.  Most of my friends' kids have birthdays around August-November.  Attending birthday parties is like a once a month activity, if not more often.  Curiosity got the better of me, and I googled about the most popular month(s) of birth.  It turns out that summer babies are the most popular, and in particular, August babies... so you work back 9 months, and most couples were pretty busy in November...  That's what goes through my head when people tell me when they're expecting their babies!  *wink*  

And so it got me thinking back to my expecting days...  Our little man was a Fall baby.  By this time of that year, we had our nursery pretty much all planned out.  Couldn't help it, we were THAT excited!  If you're having a summer baby, you should be well on your way with baby equipment purchasing and of course, planning around the nursery!  No pressure...  if you still need some ideas, read on! 

The nursery was probably our first DIY home project back in our previous home.  This was the first trimwork project that the Mr. took on.  Adding the chair rail was a huge project in itself that made a huge difference.  By huge I mean the trim was all hand-cut and manually nailed-in - the Mr. didn't think he would be doing much wood work in the future and didn't want to invest in electric cutting equipment.  (Now he's probably cursing, "what the heck was I thinking?"  Little did he know that he would be doing all sorts of DIY projects in our new house just 2 years down the road from then!!  Like this and this!) 

We painted the walls above the chair rail in Benjamin Moore's Robin's Nest.   I absolutely fell in love with the colour as I saw it used in a makeover of a teenage girl's room.  I showed the magazine picture to the Mr. and demanded that our baby's room be painted in this colour.  (Yes I already drove him nuts with all my picture-bombarding in the pre-pinterest days).  Even before knowing I would have a boy, I wanted it blue.  It's just such a lively colour and yet so pure.  I really didn't care if I were having a girl, she was gonna live in a blue room!  But a whole room in that colour would seem a bit too much, and that was why we had the chair rail to give it a break.  Below the rail, we painted a sandy beige to sort of tone down the colour a bit.

Our next project was putting up the sticker wall mural of birds and cherry blossoms that we got from IKEA.  I loved how the grey went with the blue wall...  but then, a day later, we noticed some of the stickers started peeling off.  Being the pregnant me, all I could think of was there was ABSOLUTELY no way I would be picking up stickers from my baby's crib through the life of this room!  And so I started doing the unthinkable...  

Fed up with rubbing in the stickers back on the wall, I took a pencil and outlined the stickers. Guess what, we handpainted the wall decal.  Nothing against IKEA, we love our IKEA hacked dressing room!  Maybe it was for the better this time...  

We used a high gloss version of the colour that's a tone lighter than the walls, and I liked the softer look of this over the grey stickers!  The IKEA light fixture compliments the whimsical wall quite well.  

Next up, we put in floating shelves on the opposite wall of the crib.  They were set up in stepped format to add some visual interest.  One thing to remember if you are installing shelves above the changing table, just make sure you're only putting soft items (eg. cloth books, stuffed toys, etc.) on them.  You don't want to risk any heavy items falling on your precious one...  you can never be too safe!

Thank goodness for the comfortable armchair, where I sat nursing him most days.  You definitely need a chair with arms, which lend support to your aching neck/ shoulder/ elbow/ wrist as you nurse your baby.  That was also where I rested, with my legs on the ottoman for a breather...  if I was even lucky enough that he would nap for 10 minutes in the beginning (and where I sat MSN'ing my new baby forum buddy, who was also trying to get her baby to nap longer...  oh the things we moms do!)

An important piece of furniture that is not in the picture was a side table that we had beside the armchair.  Of course you would need a spot to put the bottle, a night light, and other knick knacks!  It came in a dark wood colour, but we painted it with the leftover paint of the wall mural. Little man now has it as his bedside table, on which he has a Spiderman clock =)

Kudos to my dear Mr. to have done such a fantastic job on installing the extras and painting the room.  It was where I spent countless hours in the first few months of little man's life nursing him and trying to get him to nap.  Sometimes I wondered if I would ever get to leave the room, with his cycle of changing diapers, feeding, playing, napping, and crying.  Hey, if you're going to spend hours of your day in the room, might as well make it pretty right?

Now that little man is more than half of my height, I think it's time we start his big boy room project.  We've converted his crib to a double bed, where he's spoiled to be able to sleep slanted in every which way.  We have a new colour palette in mind, and I think we may need to do some furniture painting...  and I LOVE these rug tiles for his big boy room!

Are you ready for your baby's arrival?  The Mr. and I agree though, that nobody will be 100% ready for a newborn.  Do you have a theme for the nursery?