Weekend Warriors

This weekend was jammed packed for me and Scott. We took a trip down to Florida to visit the fam and tackle the daunting task of turning an office into a guest bedroom, a living room into a living room/office, and a guest bedroom into a baby’s nursery. Sound like it lot? It was. But it was a blast and the end result was exactly what I had envisioned, which rarely happens. Bonus! Let’s take a trip down memory lane to see what the plans for the nursery were:

We used the existing bedding, whose circles led to a bike theme for the room, including some custom bike art and a bike mural on the wall. My sister had already purchased the crib and glider, but other than that we were working from scratch in the space. Get ready for a picture explosion.

Dad used his infamous painting skills, along with his infamous painting scrubs, to put a nice cheery blue on the walls to brighten up the space. We chose a color that worked well with the bedding but that would also coordinate with our navy and orange accents in the room. We went with a low VOC paint since my sister is pregnant and she didn’t want to end up with a “three headed baby” – her words, not mine.

Scott and Andy (the baby daddy) got to work hanging a new ceiling fan in the space that would bump up the circulation of cool air for the bebe. We also installed a new wall sconce from Ikea (you can see the heinous one that was in place beforehand in the painting picture above), as well as installing some floating Ikea shelves and curtain rods from Target. Our drill got plenty of good work this weekend – thank goodness for power tools!

The piece de resistance of the room is the custom bike mural that we painted in a crisp white paint. We borrowed a projector from my sister’s school and projected a bike image that we found online onto the walls. We started by outlining the image with a white paint pen (a tip I got from my coworker) and then basically played coloring book to fill in the lines with a couple of different size paint brushes.

After two days of blood, sweat and tears, a trip to Target, and 10 carrot cake cupcakes later, the nursery was completed. We’re still working on finding the perfect rug and another bookshelf for some much needed storage, but the majority of the room is ready to go for no-name-baby-boy.

The white bike mural makes just the right visual impact when you enter the room, along with our custom bike artwork in the oh-so-affordable Ikea frame. The white grommet top curtains (from Ikea as well) bring even more light into the room, which is exactly what the doctor ordered in this space.

We kept an existing dresser that’s been in our family for a loooong time for a changing table and installed some floating shelves above for some modern, open shelving. We made sure to install the shelves at a reachable height for my 5′-2″ sis, but not low enough that she might be knocking her head while changing the baby. We picked up a couple of orange accents from Target’s office supply department and hung another piece of DIY bike art over the changing area.

The glider from Babies R Us perfectly fills the other corner of the room, which also includes the new Ikea sconce and a custom mobile a la Audrey as a gift to my sister (tutorial on that to come). The bicycle pillow hails from CB2 and yet again brings the bike theme home, in a bright blue and green embroidered kind of way.

And one final picture of the crew, dogs included. The dogs worked super hard the whole weekend, doing behind the scenes work like electrical wiring and assembling a crib. They were pretty tuckered afterwards, to say the least. :) Share your thoughts on the bodacious boy boudoir!

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