The Homemade Nursery: The Final Reveal

As you may remember from my post about my Nurture Hope quilt, I am quite fortunate to be pregnant.  My husband and I had been holding off on doing much in terms of preparation for the baby until we took holidays back in November.  Then we got started and have been plugging away every since.  I'm going to share individual projects we embarked on over the past few months, and then a final blog post with the big reveal of the whole room. 

The time has come for the Final Reveal of the baby's Homemade Nursery!  I am just in love with this space, and if the baby doesn't like it, I will quite gladly switch rooms!  So, let's take a tour, shall we?

Since we don't know the gender of the baby, we decided to keep the room fairly neutral.  As usual, I took to Pinterest to help generate ideas, and eventually we settled on a mountain forest theme, mostly because I saw an excellent geometric mountain mural I wanted to attempt.  This was our first project: paint the room, and try to become artists.  I must say that I am pleased with how it turned out!

You can see a mobile hanging above the crib; I made this with feathers from my friend's chicken coop (don't worry, I cleaned them), and shellacked oak branches foraged from the park near my house.  

On the wooden crib, you can see a collection of pillows: a mountain pillow that I made, and a gorgeous woodblock printed bear that was made-to-order from Laura Frisk's etsy shop especially for this baby. 

Laura hand carves the stamp from wood, and uses it to print the bear on the fabric..... simply amazing!

 There is also a sheepskin, the knitted leaf blankie I made, and an oh-so-perfect birch swaddler from Little Unicorn.  

So many great textures in this picture

Next, we have a nice little rocking chair area.  The rocking chair was a gift from my dad to my mom from when they were early in their relationship - the same rocking chair that she used to rock me and my sisters when we were babies.  I used a nice, thick sheepskin to cover the back, and replaced the floral seat cushion with a new oatmeal coloured one.

  I found the most perfect footstool handcarved from a teak tree stump.  

Beside the rocking chair is a side table that my dad had made many years ago from my grandparent's old dining room table.  On top, a lamp and a polar bear coin bank from my sister.  

Above, is a mountain shelf that my dad made with a few woodland knicknacks, including a tiny deer, a pinecone, a potted foraged pine branch, and an owl.  

I finished the shelf with beeswax.... it leaves the wood looking natural, but with a nice satin seal

Behind the rocking chair is a growth chart a friend made for the baby: she included a fox and a Charley Harper inspired pair of birds.

On the other side of the rocking chair are the bookshelves.  

We hung IKEA photo ledges on the wall to show off the covers of the children's books.  The illustrations of picture books are so beautiful and engaging, so this is the perfect way to store and display them. 

 Above the books are the antlers, in a featured place (due to their sheer size!).  

Looking up, the wood light fixture.  It took a little searching to find lighting that suited the room.  I wanted something made from natural materials, as opposed to a typical silver and glass fixture.  

Next is the dresser area.  

This refinished dresser really reflects the feel of the room.  It is modernized vintage, natural materials, and homemade(ish).  

Inside, I made drawer dividers to help keep baby's tiny things organized.  

Above the dresser I curated a gallery wall featuring art from local artists, myself, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and some of my favourite artists (Including Dani of Begoodnatured, Jahna Vashti, Helen Ahpornsiri, Charley Harper, Teagan White and more).  I selected art that reflected a forest theme, so animals and trees that would be found in a mountain forest. 

Including: Charley Harper, local artists, Helen Ahpornsiri.  The diamond is a suncatcher I backed with fabric.

Including: Jahna Vashti, Teagan White, Marisa Redondo

Including: Teagan White, me, local artists, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, Dani from Begoodnatured 

The details in Dani from Begoodnatured's work are phenomenal.  No photo does her work justice.  The texture, the colours, the details.  I (and the baby) am so lucky to have one of her pieces on this wall.  

The nest and birds are part of a decoration from my bridal shower, and the "egg" is a stone that my dad found years ago in a stream that was naturally polished to almost perfectly round.  I have had it since childhood, and have always adored it. 

We splurged and bought an autheticated Charley Harper print.  Lucky baby.

This fabulous cross stitch owl is the work of my mother-in-law.  

My vision for the room was a lot about the "feel".  I really wanted to focus on bringing together lots of natural elements and textures, like fur, feathers, wood, and wool.  I wanted to keep the colour palette pretty neutral as well.  I love the whole vibe of the room; it is very cozy and I am very excited to share the room with the baby.  I asked my husband if he thinks the baby will like the room, and he says the baby won't notice until he/she is older, and by then they will want a Spiderman or Frozen themed room.  I told him that the baby will have to move to a new room then, because I love this one so much! 

So baby, we are ready for you!  We can't wait to welcome you into this world!

Bronson loves the room, too, and is very excited about his new baby,

Other Homemade Nursery baby-related craftiness:

One-of-a-kind Diaper Bag
Baby Hat (with free knit pattern)
Baby Mittens (with another free knit pattern)
Baby quilts: Alternate Universe MALE
Baby quilts: Alternate Universe FEMALE
So much Small Sewing

The Homemade Nursery: the Essential Antlers

As you may remember from my post about my Nurture Hope quilt, I am quite fortunate to be pregnant.  My husband and I had been holding off on doing much in terms of preparation for the baby until we took holidays back in November.  Then we got started and have been plugging away every since.  I'm going to share individual projects we embarked on over the past few months, and then a final blog post with the big reveal of the whole room. 

I wanted to create a gallery wall with a mixture of art and other structures in the baby's room.  One thing I wanted to include on the gallery wall was a set of antlers.  Little did I know (what a city girl), antlers are huge!!  

My husband had a set of mounted antlers in his room as a child, and they since moved into his parent's garage.  They are a pretty impressive set (to my eyes, anyway), but they were a little dated looking, because of the red velvet setting they rested on.  They needed an update.

Before

I took all the screws out of the back of the plaque in order to remove the mount and the antlers. The velvet was held in place with staples, so I carefully pulled each one in order to remove the fabric from the mount.  Once that was off, I used it as a pattern for the replacement fabric.  I wanted to find something with a knit texture, preferably with a fair isle pattern..... and I stumbled on the perfect thing in the sock aisle at Superstore!  It took a little cutting and creative sewing to turn the two socks into one piece of usable fabric, but it was worth it.  After cutting it to size, it easily stretched back over the antler mount, and I stapled it into place the same way as the velvet had been.  I reattached the mount to the plaque, and it was ready to hang on the wall!  

After

I decided to re-evaluate the plan to include it in the gallery wall due to the sheer size of the things.  So it took a featured place over the bookshelves instead. 

In situ: among excellent book company

 I was given a little grief about including antlers in a nursery, but I think it works really well!

The Homemade Nursery: A Custom Dresser Remodel

As you may remember from my post about my Nurture Hope quilt, I am quite fortunate to be pregnant.  My husband and I had been holding off on doing much in terms of preparation for the baby until we took holidays back in November.  Then we got started and have been plugging away every since.  I'm going to share individual projects we embarked on over the past few months, and then a final blog post with the big reveal of the whole room.  

One of the first things I knew I was going to want to do for the baby's room was refinish a dresser.  I find that most dressers bought brand new these days are kinda..... hunks of garbage.  They are wood printed veneer pasted over junky particle board, and fall apart at nothing, all the while not even looking nice.  And they want $300 for them!  I wanted something with holding power, something strong and real, something worth the money.  

So I took a tour of the local thrift shops and used furniture stores, hoping to find something made of real wood, in a vintage style that could handle some modernizing.  I was super lucky to find this mid-century modern dresser, in good condition, just asking for some love.  

I feel like I stole this beauty.... it was only $75!

So I took it home, and sanded all the varnish off using my fancy new power sander (because doing this by hand would have killed me).  

Sanded and ready for staining

Once it was down to bare wood, my husband took over and stained the frame of the dresser a nice walnut colour, and sealed it with a clear coat finish to make it all shiny and nice.  I painted the drawers white, and then we sprayed shellac on all the unexposed surfaces to seal in the slightly musty smell the dresser had acquired over the years.  

Next, we attached the hardware.  I found the most perfect brass animal heads for the top two smaller drawers at Anthropologie (and spent almost as much as the dresser itself on them!). 

For the four larger bottom drawers, we spray painted the original hardware with a brass paint to match the pulls.  

Almost perfect!

I am so proud of how this dresser turned out! 

The final product

Close up

It is definitely a classic example of not knowing how to do something, googling it to learn, and executing it well.  I encourage anyone thinking of giving an old piece of furniture a makeover to give it a try.  We didn't find any aspect of the project difficult, and the results are so worth the effort.  

This dresser is the perfect addition to our baby's Homemade Nursery!

What do you get the woman who has everything? Home makeover!

My mom celebrated a birthday a few months back, and I didn't have any ideas for a good birthday gift that wasn't just adding more clutter.  I wanted to give her something thoughtful and special, and the one thing that came to mind was redoing her laundry room.  Ever since she and my dad built and moved into their house 8(!) years ago, the laundry room has been a bit of a disaster.  The builder's beige walls needed some jazzing up, and the stock white wire shelving (which are so impractical for storage, and really, who wants to stare at their cleaning products?) needed replacing.  Their laundry room is also their entrance from the garage, so it is the first thing they see when they walk into their house; this needs to be a welcoming, clutter-free space so they aren't burdened with visual stress upon entering their home.

Before: Disaster shelf

Before: clutter breeds clutter

Lack of organized storage space = messy corners

The first thing that had to go was the shelf.  We went through every bottle, and tossed all of the almost-empty dregs of bottles that get pushed to the back and forgotten because the shelf is so inaccessible.  All cleaning supplies that were bought in the hopes they would be great and weren't got tossed as well.  Things that got dumped there "temporarily" and got lost in the shuffle got relocated to their proper place.  We found some baskets that made for great storage for small vacuum accessories and rags.  Then we got that shelf the heck out of there!  Good riddance to poor planning! (I have no idea why those stupid wire shelving are so popular in newly-built homes - I think they are so useless....I guess they are probably cheap, and that's why builders use them?)

After clearing out the room, and moving the laundry machines into the middle of the tight room, my sister and I set to work painting the walls a nice, peaceful sky blue.  Two coats in, and the change was amazing already!  The blue was so much fresher and more pleasing to the eye than the boring beige that used to be in there.  Mom was worried at first about the colour choice, but did warm up to it as things started settling into place.

The next day, with the help (aka: he led the show) of my dad, we hung some IKEA shelving on the walls.  We used the BESTA collection, complete with the coolest doors, a beautiful wavy white, that went well with the blue walls.  All the cleaning supplies and vacuum parts and rags found new homes in the cupboards.

After: cupboards are a huge improvement

We moved the washing machine and dryer closer together so that they no longer had a gap between them, and used the extra space on the side to make a broom wrangling station.  I picked up a broom caddy to mount to the wall that can hold all the brooms, mops, and dust pans.  We also wall-mounted the Dyson vacuum, so it no longer needs to be propped up in a corner.  More organization=less mess!

After: broom caddy

We also installed the IKEA Grundtal drying rack over the laundry tub.  This drying rack is great, because it can collapse against the wall when not in use, which means the area looks tidier.  I also tossed her old mismatched collection of hangers, and replaced them with matching white ones.

After: washtub area

 The last step was to put the finishing touches in place.  I picked up a blue sign that says "Home" hanging from a clothesline with clothespins (fitting!) from Walmart, and I found the most beautiful set of wall hooks at Winners that feature white roses.

After: wall decor

Then came the big reveal!  My mom loved the change, and the space is so much more welcoming and calm.  My goal was to reduce clutter, remove the eyesores, and just make the space more organized and clean looking.  I truly believe that clutter breeds clutter and neat breeds neat.  A tidy space makes you want to keep it tidy, whereas a pile of junk encourages you to just keep adding to it.  After completing this weekend project, my mom was much happier with the room, and that makes me happy.  I think this made a great birthday gift!