PIstachio and Plum Nursery Reveal

I finally had a chance to take photos of the nursery. The framed Kew Garden print was finally finished right around the time I received the vinyl wall decal and the glider. A lot has come together in the past few months to create this unisex cum feminine nursery. What started out like this in April is now complete. This is the view that greets you at the door.

The dresser and crib are on the same wall, this is configured a little differently than when the boys shared this room.
 
When we began this nursery we didn't know what the sex would be. If she had been a boy I would have added purple elephants. But since she is a girl I'm doing a flower theme, hence the violet doily and tea pot. Mr. W brought the leather kangaroo back from a business trip to Japan. I've been coveting this Big Ben alarm clock for a long time for myself, but realized it would be perfect in the nursey. Moms always need to know how long they have been nursing!
 
A closer view of the wall decal. I know I'm late to the wall words trend, but it didn't seem to work in the bungalow, and there wasn't enough vertical wall space in that nursery.  I ordered this decal in plum and  I was able to reuse these wall plaques (from SL@H) which were a gift from a friend.

This is a nice view in which you can see how the crib skirt matches the extra hem we added to the curtain. My friend randomly gave us the crib sheet since I didn't register for a 3rd child. It fits perfectly!
 
We were able to put the changing table along this wall on it's own. A friend bought this pansy painting for me when we were in college, and now it works perfectly in the pistachio and plum nursery.

My nursing station. The new glider finally arrived as well. The plum color ties in with the curtain fabric and gives a great pop of color against the wainscot in this corner.

I'm so glad we decided to buy a new chair for the new nursery. It is very comfortable and I love that it spins. It makes it so easy to turn to reach a cup of tea or whatever I need from the side table.

 

A view back toward the door. The one thing I have yet to do is strip the paint from the transom window. I never climber a ladder near the end of the pregnancy to clean that...ad now who knows when I'll have time.

Nursery Curtains

 I bought these plum colored toile curtain panels years ago during a sale at PB. My plan was to be able to use them in the middle bedroom of our old house if our second child was a girl. That's right I checked the receipt, I bought them in July 2009! I have been holding on to these for awhile! They were marked down to $68.99 each. The pattern is Matine, but PB no longer carries them in this plum colorway. The problem is that they are only 84" which would have hit the floor in the old house, but leaves them far too short in the new house's 10' high ceilings.

My mom went with me on a hunt for fabric and I was able to find a near perfect shade of plum colored sateen fabric, which was marked down 60% off with just enough left on the bolt for us to add a hem to the bottom and make a crib skirt. In order to soften the transition between the two fabrics I wanted a flat trim. I found a nice warm grey colored ribbon with plum colored gimp. My mom was going to sew the crib skirt and I was going to sew the curtains. I finally let out all the seams and was waiting for her to cut out the fabric when she offered to do the sewing for me. I gratefully took her up on that offer.

She brought the first one back today and I think it turned out perfectly!

 

I bought the same RH curtain rods I used in the formal rooms in our old house, the classic collection in bronze finish, except this time I chose the ball finials which are more Colonial Revival, but I wanted something very simple for the bedrooms rather than high Victoriana.

Things are just about finished in the nursery, and just in time since baby will be here next week!

Side table makeover

On the way home from our end of the summer camping trip last year we drove down Powell Blvd and I spied this 70s era side table outside a second hand shop. I went back a couple days later with the boys; it had the right amount of detail I wanted for a bedside table in our guest room. I was hoping to find something for under $50 and they wanted about $85 for this which was way too much considering how many pieces of trim were missing or broken. Conveniently Mr. F called me in the middle of the hard sell and I walked away. That was just what I needed for the salesman to drop the price down to $60.

Fall passed and I never seemed to have the time to get out to sand and fix the table. I was hoping to get it together in the spring before Mr. & Mrs. K came out to stay with us for Easter, but again I didn't do it. As I was envisioning the new nursery I realized this pie crust top table would be the perfect side table for a nursing station. It is large enough to hold a lamp and any drinks and snacks I need. I had a can of Benj Moore Cameo White that was an extra from a project when I was working which is a nice  neutral off white that will go with the antique white crib and changing table, but could easily transition to a side table in our Master Bedroom in the future.

We had a few nice days at the beginning of May so I was able to get out and sand the table down. There were a ton of nooks and crannies so I used a chair since I was already big by then.

The top of the table was pretty gauged up so we'd need to use wood filler to even those out.

During the sanding process I realized that the underside of the table top was delaminating. We used wood glue and clamps to fix that.

This little broken bracket also had to be glued back together.

 

This weekend there was finally a break in the weather, not rainy, not too windy, not too hot, and we were not too busy for Mr. W to use the paint sprayer to prime and paint the table this weekend. Pretty nice considering it was Father's Day weekend. I really appreciated it though, I'm getting antsy about finishing the nursery in time. It looks a thousand times better even with just the primer!

 After letting the paint cure for a couple of days I was finally able to set up my nursing station table with the newly made over lamp and side table.

 I love all the detailing in the table legs. And this Cameo White color helps to set it off with the stained wainscot behind it.

 And if I take the photo just right you can see how well the incised circle pattern shows through even after being painted.

Final decisions made for the nursery.

We got so much accomplished this weekend, which I wasn't expecting, but I'm feeling such a sense of relief about it! I had received an email that Stars Antique Mall was having a sidewalk sale this weekend so on Friday I took Baby Boy over there to scout for high boy dressers. I really wanted to work with a CLer who refurbishes furniture in shabby chic style, but she has a 6 wk lead time and she doesn't respond much to email; I decided she wasn't reliable enough for me at this point. I really need to be able to unpack baby clothes and things into the nursery so I can have a sense of relief.

I really wanted an ivory colored dresser for this room to coordinate with  the rest of the nursery furniture, but I feel guilty about painting real wood or wood veneer.  These are a couple dresser options she sent me, and admittedly they would be super cute painted, but they don't look like they are in horrible shape so I'd have some guilt.

 

I found this dresser at Stars, which was cute and I loved the shape and amount of drawers, but it was pink, and I hate pink. I certainly wouldn't feel guilty about painting this one, but frankly I don't have the time for that right now. I have enough work cut out for us just getting the side table painted and finished. And I really shouldn't be sanding questionable paint right now.

We realized we needed to pull the trigger on everything, so we decided to go for the oak highboy dresser with attached mirror which I found at City Liquidators and that we'd go with the new glider from Good Night Room. It is admittedly dull and doesn't have a tufted back like I was looking for, but I'm running out of time and need to commit. We bought the dresser first to be picked up later that day and then headed to suburbia.  I was delighted to learn that they added a few new fabrics to their selection and one of them was a plum colored twill. Not only does this fit into the color scheme of the room best, I was starting to get disappointed I'd have to settle for a practical neutral in there, but it will be less likely to show the dirt than a cream colored one. The only downside is that it has an 8 week lead time and we've put this decision off till the end. That's okay though, even though it will arrive approximately 4 weeks after baby arrives, I will still spend plenty of months nursing in it.


Here is the dresser freshly cleaned and oiled. I had a chance to sort all the baby clothes too so I'm feeling good about everything.
 
One other thing that needed to be accomplished was finding some sort of cabinet or wardrobe to store all my table linens which had been occupying the closet in the guest room. Now that it is the boy's bedroom I need to be able to move all their clothes over from the closet in the nursery.  While driving to my dr apt this week I drove by a yard sale and saw half an Eastlake dresser. I stopped by on my way home to investigate. It is in really rough shape, but they only wanted $20 for it. The lock escutcheons are original, but the pulls are dreadful 60s era hammered pulls. I'm sure I can find a set of antique hardware to fix this up, and I might eve have it refinished at some point, but for now, $20 is exactly what I need to solve my linen storage problem.

In search of nursery furniture

This weekend was the Memorial Day camping trip but I bailed early. I was hoping to make it at least two nights with an escape plan for the 3rd night since I am 33 wks pregnant. However the campsite chosen this year was on the Washington coast and it rained the whole ding dong time. And any time it slightly cleared up, the mosquitoes came out. The clincher for me was that this camp ground's group campsite didn't have it's own outhouse. Instead one had to walk all the way thru the RV section to get to the bathrooms. That's not exactly idea if one needs to get up in the middle of the night multiple times to pee. I'd have to layer back on my clothes, wrestle back into my galoshes, waddle through the dark in the rain to the toilet and hopefully not pee myself on accident. I considered just squatting in the bushes since it was the middle of the night and no one would see me, but I was too worried I'd loose my balance and slip and fall in the mud. Since Mr. W snores through everything I was also afraid he wouldn't hear my cries for help and one of his friends would ed up finding me half naked in the mud. No thank you!

I left after lunch on Saturday and missed out on the Star Wars themed dinner we were planning with the L family for Sunday night. I made some Star Wars sugar cookies in advance with cookie cutters from WS. They turned out pretty cute, and I'm sure there will be lots of Star Wars events in my future with 3 children.

 

On my way home I stopped at HomeGoods when I crossed over into Oregon. We were planning on not getting a new chair for the nursery. The wing back chair and ottoman I had reupholstered for Baby Boy's arrival is in the playroom and I anticipate nursing a lot in it in that room while I watch the boys play. I saw a great photo of a purple tufted chair with low arms in a nursery and it inspired me to find a similar vintage chair for my own nursery. I thought I'd do an in person search while I'm child free since I haven't had much luck on CL. I found this one at HG in a shiny grey and shiny green. I like the tufting, but the back may not be high enough. This one was $399.

Even though it was very sunny in Portland, I was able to talk my mom into going furniture shopping with me. We started at City Liquidators, This chair was an upholstered rocker. It doesn't thrill me, but the price of $279 is not bad.

City Liquidators also has some antiques available . This dresser is exactly what I am looking for for the nursery, a 5 drawer highboy, something with an attached mirror. This turn of the century oak dresser even had most of it's original hardware intact. Unfortunately I have my heart set on an off white dresser that is shabby chic. I couldn't possibly paint over real oak!

We drove out to Bridgeport Village to check out Good Night Room, they closed their Irvington location. There had a mint green glider and ottoman on sale because they were floor models. The chair was about $500. An ottoman would overwhelm the space in our nursery, and the mint green would clash with the green of our walls. But here is the chair in a different fabric with a contrasting welt.

Our last stop was Kitchen Kaboodle. I was really tired at this point, the weather was SO different from that of the camping trip! None of the chairs really worked, This blue velvety chair had arms similar to what I was hoping for, but far too expensive at $770.


What I like best is the Julia chair from Ballards. It has the tufted back and low arms. And even though the comments section has a few complaining about how much smaller it is than they anticipated, it is comparable in size to my Amanda chair in the family room. It's made for short people like me. But so expensive! And I'd have to pay shipping. And none of the custom fabrics are plum. I'll order some fabric swatches, so we'll see. I'm hoping something perfect turns up on CL soon.

Vintage Lamp Makeover

My mom's best friend gave me this ivy covered lamp years ago. It belonged to her mother and she thought I would like it since I was in a big ivy kick in grade school and high school. I am assuming that this lamp is from the 60s or something. It originally had a large cylinder shaped shade, but the fabric was torn and a bit stained. After I graduated college and sharing a bungalow with roommates I decided to replace the lampshade. I was inspired by a how-to article in a BH&G magazine for a frilly shade. I was also working at RH at the time and used a damaged shade that had been marked out of stock for the framework. It's been about 15 yrs and the shade has definitely seen better days, as well as never being the exact right scale for the base anyway.

I had been using this in our guest room, but since that has morphed into the boys room, I figured it could work in the new nursery on the side table (yet to be refinished) in my nursing station. Baby Boy and I ventured out to NoPo to the Rainbow Lampshade Shop. If you bring in your lamp base you can have a fashion show with all the ready made shades they have so you can find the best pairing. I knew I wanted something with more feminine lines than a cylinder shade, maybe a pagoda style shade. The pagoda was too small diameter wise, they are really better paired with short, squat bases, like a ginger jar. There was a nice bell shaped shade, but I finally settled on this square shade with cut corners. I had her add a riser to the top of the harp to give it a little more height off the base.Maybe it needs a little more height?

I was considering getting a colored shade, but she also had some green gimps and I liked that idea best. I selected an olive and straw colored gimp which she applied to the top and bottom self edges. I'm happy with the way it turned out. Now I need to sand down that side table, it was very hard for me to get a good angle for the photos while sitting on the floor 6 months pregnant!

 

Progress on the Boys' New Room & Nursery

Over the weekend we moved all the furniture into the new Big Boy Room. I have been trolling CL for used furniture since I need two new dressers and have been flirting with the idea of a new chair for the nursery.  We set up both the beds on Friday for the boys. I just love the look of  a pair of matching twin beds! I always hoped I could have them set up like this which is why I ordered a second set of matching bedding from LoN a couple years ago and why we bought two bed frames last summer.  The waterfall top, bird's eye maple night stand I found at Stars over the winter. I had set up a clock on it so Our Little Helper could begin to learn to tell time. (That darn clock has gone missing, thanks, I'm sure, to a toddler.) I just love bird's eye maple and think it works well for both sexes. I spent $65 on it and wished that there were a pair of them.

I have been searching for a second dresser for the boys' room for a year now. Somehow no matter what I find, Mr. W doesn't seem to be interested in it. To be fair I did have my heart set on Eastlake marble top gentleman's dressers for a long. long time. I recently found this bird's eye maple serpentine front dresser on CL. It does have a gouge out of the maple veneer on top, but the lister was kind enough to mention that it could be covered up with a doily.  I knew I had this PB baseball runner which I bought for the last nursery and hoped that would work. I love the little claw feet on the cabriole legs too. I got it for $120, it was worth the drive to Hillsboro!



 
With a pair of beds in this room, and the placement of heating vents and the closet, the only place for my uncle's childhood desk was in the bay window. I bought the red lamp at Ikea over the winter too.

I have red ticking fabric bed skirts on order and over the weekend I bought some red ticking stripe fabric to sew curtains for the bay windows. I ordered curtain hardware from RH similar to what we had in the Laburnum Bungalow. It was on sale, what a lucky surprise! I have a lot of wall decor from the old nursery as well as baseball collectibles I inherited from my dad. I'll be adding those as I can over the next few weeks. I also have my eye on a little baseball themed bedside lamp at PBK.

I really wasn't sure which direction I wanted to go in for the nursery, other than wanting sage green walls. For years before I met my husband I had been planning out my ideal unisex red, white, and blue nursery. With all of that moving on to the Big Boy Room I didn't really have another unisex plan in mind. I do have plenty of green and purple little girl room ideas in mind, which is a problem considering we are Team Green and I don't know who is growing inside me. Someone on TB inspired me with the idea of a woodland theme, I even found online a darling woodland fabric that I could use to make curtains for the windows. Sadly it was discontinued and nothing else I found online or in fabric stores thrilled me in the woodland direction. Too bad because I could play up the red & white mushrooms and reuse some of my nursery bedding.

I already purchased two super marked down purple toile curtain panels at PB years ago in the hopes that I could use them in the middle bedroom of our old house. There are two windows in the new nursery, so really this is the only room in this house where I could use them. Since the ceilings are 2' taller in this house I'd have to add a coordinating fabric as a think hem at the bottom of the panels. Maybe that coordinating fabric could be used to make a bed skirt for the crib? All of this was kinda wishful thinking on my part since I needed the room to be unisex. But Mr. W didn't understand why a baby boy couldn't have purple toile curtains in his room.

With that open-mindedness to back me up I decided to go forward with green and purple.
Here is the room with all th ebig boy furniture moved out. The ivory crib and changing table really pop on these green walls (Benj. Moore #2034-50 Acadia green.) This room looks so much bigger without the striped walls and furniture!

 

For now I think I will re-use this old rocker that my parents used when I was a baby, and that I used when nursing OLH.) Mr. W needs to fix the top though which is busted. I bought a second hand octagonal top gate leg table last summer  that I intended to fix up as a night stand in the guest room. I was planning on painting it ivory; I think it will work perfectly here in the nursery for now. I will reuse the ivy lamp that was in the guestroom, but will probably buy a new shade for it.
 
I took my mom to the Portland Orchid Society's orchid show this weekend and then we went shopping for fabric.  I bought this purple zydo orchid for the nursery and put it in an old McCoy pot I used in our old kitchen. We also found a plum colored sateen I can use for the bottom of the curtains and since it was marked down 60% we bought enough so my mom can sew a bed skirt for the crib. (We are both wishfully thinking this baby is a girl.)

I'm still trolling CL for one more dresser, something I would probably paint off white. Part of my delay is that I feel guilty painting a perfectly good piece of furniture if it doesn't have damage to the original finish. Depending  upon what I can find, the dresser will likely go here next to the crib so we can keep the changing table of the far south wall. (You can also see I have a bunch of green and purple blankets that we received from all the showers we had for our first baby. We received so many hand made baby blankets that we never got through them all, now they'll be fresh for this third baby.)

Big Changes For The Boys' Room

Nesting seems to have kicked in in full effect. Our original plan was to continue to have the boys share the smaller bedroom with blue and white striped walls and put the baby in the guest room which has black floral wallpaper. We couldn't afford to have the wallpaper striped, and we don't want to go through that process again ourselves, and the condition of the walls beneath is an unknown that has the potential to increase the project costs dramatically. Plus, a baby doesn't care what his or her walls look like, certainly we could get by with what we currently have.

But we have transitioned Baby Boy to the toddler bed, and while that kinda works, it is still pandemonium every night in their room. During nap time, when he is home alone he prefers to sleep in his big brother's big twin bed. Mr. W and I debated whether we should just go all the way and set up the matching twin bed we purchased him. And when Mr. W suggested out of the blue that we go buy a new refrigerator last weekend, we also bought a twin size mattress. It turns out that we ended up getting back more money from our tax returns. Nice!

The more I thought about it though, it seems so silly to have to two boys sharing the smaller room and putting the baby in the much larger middle bedroom. With the knowledge that we had a bit of money to work with I had the paperhanger who did most of the work for us at the Laburnum Bungalow provide an estimate for stripping and painting. He didn't anticipate too much work to the plaster beneath the wall paper. Mr. W found the estimate reasonable, and they had an opening right away. Very exciting, but like the fireplace project, it was happening sooner than I had had time to have a proper design in place.

Just for frame of reference, here is the guest room before.

 

 A close up of the lovely irises on black background wallpaper.

And here the room is liberated from the wallpaper. I actually really liked the wallpaper beneath the black, but I didn't get in in time to take a photo of it for posterity.

 
You can see there were significant cracks on the outside corners of the bay and a couple of plaster blow outs from nails being driven into the plaster. (Not sure why nails would have been used in the walls when there is a perfectly good picture rail in every room. The mysteries of previous owners...)
 

After the plaster repair work was done and the walls were primed and painted. The ceiling is Benj. Moore Cameo White and the walls are #HC-149 Buxton Blue. Both in a Regal Matte finish which is a washable flat. A flat finish is best in an old house to help conceal any imperfections in the walls, of which these have many, as well as being more historically appropriate. I specified that he wall paint be applied above and below the picture rail. Bringing the ceiling color down to the picture rail is more of a Colonial Revival treatment.

 

The boys' old room will become the new nursery. The blue stripes were primed and painted over. The ceiling is also Cameo White and the walls are #2034-50 Acadia green. I haven't quite decided which direction I am going to go for this room's theme. I I initially wanted to do a sage green, but flirted a bit with jadite green and turquoise for the walls. Of the 6 options I gave Mr. W, this was the one he liked the most. It is a little cheerier than the HC-119 Kittery Point green which was the other sage green option.