Working on the nursery

This weekend we did a lot of work on what will become our baby girl's nursery. I've been incredibly busy the last few weeks cleaning out stuff from the guest bedroom. I try to use the rule that if I haven't used something in a year then it needs to go. That's harder than you might think. I have pack rat tendencies and I can rationalize how I might have a use for these things sometime in the future so I should just hold on to them. But we only have so much space in the house and I don't want things to be cluttered so some of my "treasures" will just have to go. I've been selling things on Ebay or giving them away on Freecycle. All of the shelves and drawers in the bookcases and desk are now empty. The closet is still quite packed with my hobby things but there is only so much I can stand to part with right now.

The walls in this room have been a challenge for us. The walls in our house have a standard splatter/knock-down finish that most walls have. The previous owners had put a wallpaper border around this room at a chair rail height. Under the border they smoothed the wall texture so that the border would look better. So when we removed their border we were stuck with the challenge of making the wall texture uniform - either all smooth or all textured. Neither way sounded like much fun. We decided to try a smooth texture on the wall. Well that took quite a while to do and it never looked completely smooth. I hated it and I spent the most time in this room since it has been my "hobby room" where I stash all of my craft and scrapbook supplies. So later I decided I'd add a texture to the walls to cover all the imperfections in our smoothing technique. I couldn't handle doing the splatter/knock-down finish by myself so I chose a sand texture. I bought special paint that was essentially like paint with sand in it. It covered the smooth wall ugliness beautifully and rather easily. However, as we were looking at converting this room into the nursery, Stuart decided that the sandpaper texture to the walls was too scratchy for a baby's room. So he decided to try the splatter/knock-down approach. I was happy because the walls would finally match the rest of the house but I dreaded yet another project.

We got all of the furniture out of the room and Nicholas loved climbing on it. He managed use a little desk as a step to help him climb up into a shelf on a book case. He loved his little cubby hole and he called it his "pirate bed".



Stuart and I worked on masking off the room with tarps and painter's tape. We had to be sure that all of the doors, window, and ceiling was protected from the splatter he was going to put on the walls. Nicholas loved having the Little Giant ladder out - like father, like son!





Oh no! Be careful, little guy! Please don't be so daring!!!



Stuart and I worked on the masking part of the project for a long time. Nicholas was worried about us being thirsty so he showed up at the door with two glasses of milk that he had fixed for us all by himself. What a sweetie!







Today Nicholas got to help paint the baby's room. He got a real treat because he got an entire blank wall to paint however he wanted. He learned how to load the roller with paint and roll it on the wall and he also got to use a paint brush. He did great and kept the paint where it needed to be and not on the doors or himself. What kid wouldn't have fun going crazy with paint on a wall!







We also wanted him to help paint so that he could have an active part in making the room nice for his little sister. He said he was doing it to make his little sister happy but then asked how would she know that he did it for her since she isn't here to see it. I told him that was why I was taking pictures so we could show them to his little sister someday.