This was Thomas one day while I was trying to get math done with Jacob...I had turned on the TV when all other toys failed, and Thomas had made a little bed in the floor.
I got to go out and stay at Barnsley Gardens with Jeff for a few days a couple weeks back while he had customers in town. I had been out there a few times during the day and then that time for dinner where we became famous...but I hadn't gotten to spend the night there. It really is true that although it is 15 minutes from our house, it feels like you are in a different world! It is waaaaaaaaay nice. As in, we could NEVER afford to stay there without the "help" of Shaw! During the day I hung out, I went for a hike...without a map, since I don't need no stinkin' map (turns out I did need a map, as I think I might have covered all 12 miles of hiking trails by accident that day. I was getting ready to throw in the towel and make my way back to the golf course and flag down the first grounds person I saw and ask them to drive me back...but then I saw something I recognized!) , and went to the pool. One night we went and listened to the historian at Barnsley give his little talk which was very interesting. Jeff and I ate dinner one night at one of the restaurants out there and Jeff ran into a customer he used to call on from PORTSMOUTH! It was really crazy, I mean what are the odds that they would both be at the same resort eating dinner at the same time? Weird! We canoed on the little lake one night and played some bocce ball. I would like to speak for us both when I say we had a really fun time! I believe the boys were having a really fun time too since they were with Bryant and Judy and cousin Andrew!
Now, onto the nursery project!
We did a lot of stuff to this room! Jeff wanted to try out the board and batten for starters. We then talked about either keeping the fish stuff and painting the top portion of the wall one of those bright colors or going with a new plan for a new baby. I'm not gonna turn down the chance for a new decorating project, but I really did love all that fish stuff we had made for Thomas so it was a little bittersweet to move on to something new. Jeff wanted to have the navy on the walls, so he voted for my new idea which was basically really classic colors with some blown up "Little Toot" pictures from the book.
The basic steps for our project were:
1.) Prime entire room. We have found in our other painting projects that although the tan color that is throughout our house has the illusion of looking light, it is actually quite a dark color and priming has been really helpful. Priming this time around wasn't nearly as bad considering I had just done the boys bedroom which is the largest room in the history of the world. I got this room done in maybe like an hour and a half.
Yea girl, that wall looks great. And so do you.
2.) Jeff did all the woodwork. He did this all one morning while the boys and I were out running around Atlanta shopping for fabric and other fantastic things like that. He had to caulk allllll the places where the boards met the wall and where the boards met eachother and so on and so forth. And he had to putty all the nail holes. He said this wasn't a bad process, but the caulking seemed terrible to me...after I gave it a try. Anyway, since Jacob wasn't there, that does mean though that we don't have any pictures of this process! The best I have is this picture I took after we got back once it was all up (we got 3 test pots of navy paints, one was a grayish navy, one was a purple undertone and one was a blue undertone):
3.) Then I had to sand and prime the boards. No picture of that step either.
4.) We then decided, for sloppiness' sake, to paint the navy upper part of the room before we semi-gloss white painted the bottom. We figured that way I ran a smaller risk of hitting the shiny white wood with dark navy paint while cutting in. In retrospect, I definitely think this was the way to go. Jeff also hadn't installed the final picture ledge type piece of wood at this point so we knew I didn't have to get too close to the wood and I'd still be covered since that piece of wood would go up and cover any blunders on my part! PS- we went with the navy that had the purple undertone.
You can see how I didn't have to get all the way down to the top of the wood.
5.) Jeff installed the last piece of wood on the top of the boards to finish it off, and then caulked and puttied it. (I had primed these pieces before he nailed them up) No pictures of this either. I think we were gone again when he did this. It's such a blur to me.
6.) We used a bright white semi gloss for the entire bottom portion of the room. Even with about 2 coats of primer, it still took a SOLID two coats of semi gloss to cover...and truth be told, we could have done one more, but someone (me) got close to throwing a hissy fit and was done. I don't know why it makes me so mad to have to paint multiple coats, but it does. It's an area I'm still being sanctified in I think.
7.) I made the curtains and actually lined them this time ! OOOooooooo!!! AAHHHHHhhhhh! It was really easy actually to add the lining, and I took the advice of some blog I read somewhere along the lines and used the $4 twin flat sheets sold at wal mart as my lining fabric. They are 92 inches long, so, yea...you can't find ANY fabric for that price/yard! I also have alwayyyyyyyyssss wanted to have pinch pleat curtains and decided I was going to do it this time. Well after watching some video tutorials online, and reading some articles about how to do it, I saw that you can purchase pleating tape and pleat rod things. I stumbled upon them at Ikea the other day (yea, I went back, I'm ridiculous) and they are maybe my favorite thing right now. They made it so easy to get the pinch pleat look without having to hand sew the whole thing.
Before curtains:
After curtains:
8.) I found a bumper pad that I liked, before we decided to nix the bumper pad this time since the past two have just gotten ripped from little babies tearing at them and then pulling up on them. I decided I would try to mimic the look of the bumper pad on the crib skirt and just did a box pleat on it. I added a couple different sized navy ribbons to make it look like stripes. And then I called it a day.
9.) Jeff took pictures of some of the cute watercolor pictures in Little Toot and enlarged them and then printed them out. We stuck those bad boys in frames and that was that.
10.) I made a pillow with some of my leftover ribbon to go on the glider. I really love a lot about the way this whole room turned out, but that pillow might be in my top 2 favs.
11.) I made the mobile stuff and sewed up some little sail boats to hang on it. Jeff had suggested just buying a new mobile to save some time, but once I got online and looked, I remembered why I had made Thomas' last go round--because they are sillly expensive. One on etsy that I really liked was $140! Mine cost me about $3.
12.) Jacob painted the white letters to go over the crib. He did a fancy job! He also threaded the lamp shade with the red and white ribbon and then I spray painted it.
13.) We hung up our stuff. I had bought that red shelf (NEW from Pottery Barn! Whoop!) at the big yard sale back in June with plans to hang it in the boys room. That didn't end up happening, but it worked out well in the nursery!
I think at this point the only things I have left to do are:
1.) make a changing pad cover.
2.) get some baskets for books
3.) wash some baby clothes
4.) birth a baby
Here's the before:
And here's the after:
