Nursery refresh

In preparation for baby 3, I decided to coerce David into painting and refreshing the baby's room. I didn't spend a ton of time setting it up when Cora was born, mostly because we had only moved into our house in Omaha 6 months before she was born. Heck, we weren't even all the way unpacked from the move when she was born! So I was ready to actually spend a little energy and effort making the nursery ready for baby's arrival.

This room is directly across from the master bedroom, and is actually the exact same layout but flipped and minus the airplane ensuite we have. So it's actually pretty huge for a nursery, almost excessively so. When baby 3 grows up, I'm sure we'll switch the rooms around and have the siblings share this room instead of where the girls are,  so I didn't want to go too "nursery heavy" in the redo but rather get it to more of a neutral palate than it was.

Here's a before shot, empty when we moved in:

The weird realtor-photo-filter they put on listings makes this wall color read not as horrible as it did in real life. Guys, it was BAD. This room has always bothered me because of it. It was like this weird yellow beige pee color on wood paneling, and I couldn't stand it.

Here's what it looked like for most of Cora's babyhood:

Like I said, I didn't even take many picture of it because it felt so unfinished...kind of wish I would have now, but oh well.

I tried to convince David many a time in the last 2.5 years to rip out the paneling and put in drywall instead, but we're not super pros at drywall installation so he kept saying no. Finally I said okay, I'm just going to paint it because it cannot get any worse. And I was right!

Anyway, some progress photos:

This photo does a better job of showing how u g l y the original paint color was. It was so bad! The two swatches we tried were just leftover paint from the kitchen (more on that later) -- on the left is Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace, which is our cabinet color, and on the right is Magnolia Home's Piece of Cake. 

I really wanted something to lighten up the room, and although the grayish one reads super white on the walls in our kitchen, it showed really dark in here because of the direction of the sun we get in here. So BenMoore's Chantilly Lace it was! The bigger defining factor was that we had one gallon plus a little more leftover of the cabinet paint, so it seemed like a smart idea to just go with the one we had more of . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

fast forward to a couple weeks ago when David realized that we hadn't finished painting the new drawers he built for the kitchen cabinets and we'd used up all the leftover paint intended for them painting the nursery. 

FACEPALM. 

So we ended up buying another gallon for the cabinets, which means the whole point of picking between these two colors from leftover (aka free) paint we already had was moot. Ugh. Oh well, it made me not do the endless swatching and debating, when I went back to buy the replacement cabinet paint they were doing a BOGO on gallons of paint so we got two gallons for the price of one, and I really like how it turned out anyway, so I suppose it's alright. 

So glad we spent the time priming this paneling. If you don't already know, and have some real wood paneling in your house somewhere that you want to paint, be forewarned: it sucks paint like CRAZY. You will use so much more than on drywall. Solution? Prime, prime, prime because it will save you $$ and time and annoyance when even that doesn't cover up all the original. And this paneling was painted a relatively light color! 

I primed 1.5 coats rolling, which just meant I went over a couple spots with primer that you could see blatantly hadn't covered well, and then I think we ended up just doing one topcoat (which is Valspar Aspire paint & primer in one).

So much better!

I do really love Chantilly Lace as a color. It's the perfect white, which is hard to come by -- just off-white enough that it's not stark, but still as neutral as you can almost possibly get in a wall color. 

I switched some dressers around after getting a new one for the girls' shared room. We also spray painted the bite marks on the crib (Cora!!! hahaha) because 1) I am lazy and didn't want to repaint it all the way and 2) after researching a bunch, realized that if the worst thing this baby chews on is something spray painted, that'll probably be low on the list with the amount of house projects we do around here and 3) the white spray paint we had in the garage matched close enough to work just fine.

I also did boring things like washed the mattress cover, cleaned the baseboards, repainted the vent covers, hung some art, etc. 

This rug has seen better days, because it was cheap and it's worn down pretty quickly. Whenever I find one that grabs my attention, I'll probably replace it in here but for now it's just fine. 

Ready for the "after"?

I'm really happy with how it turned out! That closet pic at the end is pretty lame to end on but oh well, hahaha. Gotta brag about the amount of storage we have somewhere, right? We still need to upgrade the outlets and light switches in here and maybe add a mobile or something on the wall above the crib, but we'll see if those happen before baby or not (ahem, probably not).

Most of the stuff is old baby purchases or not available online, but I've linked what I could find below. None of them are affiliate links, cause I'm not big-time enough for that besides Amazon. If you have any other questions for me, HMU in the comments, and I'd be happy to answer them! 

Baby, feel free to make a timely appearance since we're ready for you now!

HG

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Crib: old, Amazon maybe?

Crib mattress: IKEA, can't figure out what one we got

Dresser: vintage, found on Craigslist

Diaper basket: HomeGoods

Faux fiddle leaf: Target (on sale today!!!)

Plant basket: World Market

Floor lamp: Target (also on sale today!!!)

Wall art: Etsy instant download, printed at Costco, frame from Michaels (wait til it goes on sale!)

Area rug: old from At Home

Fluffy rug: old from Target, came shipped to me filthy dirty so I got it fo FREE

Nightstand: vintage, chalk painted by moi

Pouf: DIY-ed by moi right here

Maple shaker peg holder: The Container Store

Boppy cover: old, Etsy maybe?

Slings: Wildbird ;) ;)