Some Progress

We've been steadily working on the nursery.  J finished putting in new moldings and painting.  I've been working on sewing a few things.  I thought I'd post some in progress photos because I can't believe how pretty the room is.  It's the nicest room in the house now.

 

 
 

J did all the picture frame molding- or faux wainscoting, I'm still not sure what the difference is.   I don't think I'd call it true wainscoting since it's not a whole panel piece.  He installed new chair rail and then used trim pieces to build the the squares and rectangles along each wall.  Then the entire bottom half was painted with enamel.  We know people do this in dining rooms normally, but it was an experiment.  I love it in the nursery.

Here is a before picture for reference.

The previous owners had a baby boy in this room.  It looks like we didn't change the wall color very much in these photos.  But the color we painted above the wainscoting is a very pretty pale blue-gray.  It's Silvery Moon by Benjamin Moore.  Love Ben Moore paint.  It's like a thick milkshake compared to any other brand we've used.

I made curtains!  I said I wasn't going to do pink but....

I am holding off on making the pink crib skirt until we have our last ultrasound this week.  J says he wants confirmation it's a girl before we go forward with all the pink ;)

The sun is insane this time of year.  The window in the room faces southeast and the low morning sun is intense.  My parents bought us the crib and J's parents bought us the matching dresser.  This little girl isn't even here yet and she's already so spoiled ;)  Actually,  it's J and I that are spoiled.  We are both so grateful to our parents for these pieces.  We never would have been able to put anything nearly as nice in to the nursery.  Both the dresser and crib will last a lifetime (the crib converts to a double bed).

 

 

I am in love with the furniture.  It is, by far, the best furniture we own.  I originally thought we'd go with a basic white crib, simple and inexpensive.  But when we saw this furniture, we couldn't go back to the idea of having a plain old white crib.  We chose the natural maple since we love our natural maple floors so much.

 

I made this little rabbit.  It was actually a prototype for something else I'm working on for the nursery.  Who doesn't love making stuffed animals?

 

We bought the little round shag rug from Shaw floors.  The company J works for is under the Shaw umbrella and we just discovered he gets an employee discount (sweet!).  J designs products for a hardwood flooring company.  He has a very cool job and I can vouch that he does amazing work.

 

And this brings me to these two little (well, not so little) fuzzy pests.  Our two cats.  They seem to think we are doing all of this for them.  They are in for a rude awakening.  I've been doing some research on how to best bring in baby.  I read an article online that suggested a few funny things.  It said not to totally exclude them from the nursery (which is why they are in there in these photos) or they will see it as a loss of territory.  The article suggested letting them in when baby is not there.  And to keep them off the furniture it said to cut cardboard the same size as wherever they jump up and then cover it with double sided sticky tape...!!!  I promise I'll film it if we go that route.  I'm not worried about the cats doing anything to the baby.  They'll never be left alone anyways.  But the little calico one likes to be destructive when she's mad.  She tears up paper and magazines, scratches things, opens doors, terrorizes the other cat, etc.  She's pretty rotten.  (...yet she's so soft-  we swear her softness is her survival mechanism).  Our sofa was sporting some new scratches when we got home from being in St. John for a week this summer.  Socks will be fine.  He's easy going.  Anyone have any suggestions for helping pets adjust to being knocked down a few notches?  And please don't tell me I have to get rid of them.  If worse comes to worse, they can live in the sun room for a while.

Anyway, some progress has been made!  Some good progress.  We still have a lot to do, but at least the baby has a place to sleep.  I'll post again when it's all finished.

Hope everyone has a great week!