You're a bright little fish and I love you.

Colin's nightly lullaby is still "Bright Bug".  I painted him a picture of a bright bug that hangs over his crib (and accurately fits all of the descriptions from the song!)

When we started putting together Nursery 2.0, I thought it would be super cute to do a 'Bright Fish' painting.

I'm not a great painter, but I drew out my best idea of what a 'bright fish' would look like:

First Draft

Canvas Sketch

I then used some of the samples we had bought for the walls and got to work painting!  I'm so happy with how the painting came out.  Gavin told me pilot fish are supposed to be mean and have big teeth.  Luckily, bright fish are not. :)

• Bright Bug? Check
• Orange and Green? Check
• Belly Does Glow? Check

I love my bright aquatic bug, already and can't wait to meet him!

The Nursery Project: Step 3 a, Furniture

The last few weeks we've been working diligently on Nursery furniture.   It probably seems a bit odd to buy furniture we aren't even intending to use right away, but we've learned from experience that failure to furnish builds on itself until you've been in your house for 4 years and you still don't have furniture in your master bedroom....

We are on our second set of furniture.  The first set, which was specifically for a nursery was awful.  I think it was by Graco, but the problem was the dresser.  It was tiny and the drawers hardly opened at all!  The dresser we bought now is probably too big for a little guy, but a little guy is going to turn into a small guy who's going to turn into a bigger guy who will just keep growing and growing... (especially if his early growth is any indicator!)  Actually the other day I was picturing the dresser covered in skateboarding and sports stickers placed haphazardly by a teenager...

I also wanted some shelves in the closet.  When we moved Big Buck Hunter out of the other guest room, we installed wiring shelves which work pretty good, but it was a hassle and we decided we didn't really want to deal with it this time.

So here's photos of our latest progress!

Back half of the Closet (we added the second rail)

Front half of the closet

Furniture and Furry Friends!

The closet organizer is a section from Ikea.  (It's called Stuva).  I like the system because it's adjustable.  I'd originally wanted it to be a little bit shorter to allow for use of the rod above it, but we decided to add another rod to the back of the closet so we maintained approximately the same amount of rod space (technically it increased a few inches).  We also have the large dresser, so clothing storage shouldn't become a problem!  All of the clothes he owns are currently hanging in the closet in the picture shown above, so it looks like it will be a while before we fill it up!

We don't have a mattress yet.  We actually chose one yesterday, but decided it would be better to wait until it was on sale or we had a coupon (it's at Babies R Us and they send us a million coupons) since we won't be using it for a while anyway.

While they aren't furniture, they are pictured above... the animals are my favorite.  While you can't quite tell yet since the decor is just starting to come together, we decided to go with a jungle theme.  I feel in love with the Melissa and Doug Giraffe but I kept telling Gavin it was a bit ridiculous to get it.  I was telling my mom about it and she fell in love with the Lion (she's a big fan of Aslan of The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, and more importantly Who he represents).  As soon as the moratorium on shopping was lifted, he arrived on our doorstep, baby's first present!  Gavin decided he wanted the Giraffe too, so now baby will have two jungle friends to grow up to!

Penny doing her best Giraffe Pose

This is labeled Step 3 a because we are not done.  We are still searching for a book case and a chair.  (In the meantime, the closet organizer is serving as a bookshelf, but I'm hoping to quickly have too many books for this to be a long term solution!)  We also have a changing table that I didn't post any pictures of (primarily because it was covered in drills, hammers, and other miscellaneous hardware!).  I am excited to start working earnestly on the finishing jungle touches in the coming weeks!

The Nursery Project: Step 2, Painting

With Step 1 complete, it was time to Paint!

With our theme in mind, we'd decided we wanted the top half (two thirds, really) of the room blue and the bottom green.  We've had blue and green paint samples laying around our kitchen for a month, and as soon as we were done with the chair rail, we took them upstairs and decided on colors.

Planning for painting!

Like with the Chair rail, I had a plan and it included buying and testing samples.  I'm no designer and a 3" piece of paper isn't quite enough to give me a feel for the color and samples are a cheap way to make sure you don't end up with something you hate.

We immediately fell in love with the blue.  The green, not so much.  We bought more samples until we'd decided on our colors.  The wall was looking a bit festive by then.

Our first samples

Some of these colors anyway....

Painting isn't that difficult, it's not even that time consuming.  PREPARING to paint is the hard part.  I divided it up into several days because I get tired very easily lately.  Sanding, cleaning, caulking holes and taping... We'd learned some from our first painting project downstairs and were much better prepared this time around.

Before

Before

Before (Just look at that lovely Chair Rail!)

This time around we opted to only tape the base boards.  We got some advice on brushes and bought a 1" and a 1.5" Purdy brush for trimming and had pretty good results.  The chair rail gave us a little bit of difficulty.

Gavin and I started on our own on Saturday with the blue only.  I helped trim, although once we started rolling, the paint smell was a bit strong so Gavin kicked me out.

Not before I took his picture!!

It took all day Saturday (with a break for 5 guys burgers) to trim the room and apply two coats of paint, but we had a great time together.  It's a little annoying that it takes hours and hours to trim and then the walls roll in about an hour, but the results were nice:

It's Blue!

On Saturday, we enlisted help.  Bobby and Heather came for Green Day!

The green was darker, and I had anticipated (correctly) that we would need three coats.  Unfortunately I still over estimated how much paint we would need and we ended up with a bunch of extra green paint!

Not enough Green!

I'd learned from our previous painting project that a central supply station/work area was important, so we set up a table.  I think it helped tremendously to keep the house clean and everything organized. 

I LOVE the results.

We aren't huge painters, and there are some rooms in our house that we will hire someone to paint (hopefully soon!) but the nursery isn't that large and it was great to be able to do it ourselves (I didn't help much on Sunday, truthfully, but I was there in spirit and in plan!)

The Nursery Project: Step 1, Chair Rail

We've had a nursery in our house since the day we moved in.  I can't remember what the nursery set up was anymore, but even after we moved in the color was clearly very nursery-ish and since we had three 'guest rooms' we had to come up with ways to distinguish between them.  The Nursery eventually became The Round Room when we purchased a round bed, a round light, and a round mirror to decorate.  But when the Round Room stuff moved into the Activity Room, it became the Nursery again.

Even so, we thought quite a while about which room should be OUR nursery.  We agreed on the Nursery because it doesn't have an exterior door and has a smaller closet.

I'm not sure when exactly I envisioned our nursery, but my vision hasn't really changed much since, although I tried.  My first dream was a chair rail.  The rooms I saw online and in ads looked so nicely divided with chair rails and two colors.  But it seemed so hard, so I convinced myself we'd be fine with a border.  But I couldn't convince myself enough, and eventually I started researching how to install a chair rail.  I never thought it looked 'easy' but I thought it looked 'doable'.  I made a plan (a very detailed plan, unsurprisingly, including measurements, schedules, price estimates, work order, and resources.  There are bridge projects that don't have such organized planning).  Like any plan, it was adjusted along the way both as we encountered hiccups and as we learned, but at least it was a place to start!

Most of the information I read agreed on what we would need, so list in hand we headed to home depot.  Overall the project wasn't particularly expensive, we spent around 120 dollars all told at home depot for the materials and ended up with a few returns (coping tools, more on that later).

Actually, like all good projects we started with a hardy breakfast at Denny's, THEN to Home Depot.

Before

 

The pictures are a bit dark, I was too busy getting ready to work to focus on great pictures!

Here's a sneak peak of Gavin at our 'work station.'  I had intended to use our desk, but it didn't seem to be sturdy enough to handle all of the sawing that was necessary!

We encountered a few challenges

1. In my planning, I had expected that chair rail was sold in 8' segments.  The rail we choose (to compliment the floor boards) was cut to purchase in the store.  Not a setback, but it did mean some quick recalculations on the floor of home depot!  One of my better ideas was labeling each piece with a number as we cut so when we got home we knew what went where. 
2. Inside Corners.  In my research I had absolutely decided that coping was the only way to do corners. The method seemed easy enough and the results are said to be far superior to using miter (45 degree cuts) in the corners.  Maybe.  I'll never know.  It turned out to be a huge hassle and we decided to miter the corners.  They came out fine!
3. Precision.  I'm a Bridge Engineer, so I absolutely understand the value of measure twice cut once.  Our measurements were right on, our equipment wasn't so exact.  Using a hand saw as opposed to an electrical saw made it a bit more challenging to cut to our very precise measurements.
4. Outside corners.  I love our house and all of it's lovely softly rounded corners.  But trying to install molding isn't so easy on a rounded corner!  Instead of a quick 45 degree cut, we had to carefully measure out separate pieces to work around the corners.  It was even more challenging because our closet is inset in the wall with a few inches of drywall.  I probably didn't know that about our home until after this project!

Here comes the Rail!

It took us about 2 hours longer than I had anticipated to complete the project, but my time estimate was fairly rough.  I tried to space out the overall nursery completion schedule to give us plenty of time so it wasn't really a problem.

And we were incredibly happy with the results!

Overall, we were very happy with the results.  

My overall thoughts on the project is that it was about as difficult as I anticipated, although obviously we ran into challenges we weren't expecting.  We were able to borrow an electric saw which would have made the work much easier if we'd had it the entire time!  If we were going to do a bunch railing/molding, I'd buy one.

There are also a few things I would do different.  First, despite everything I read suggesting painting after installation, I think it would have been easier to paint first.  Also, we initially thought the rail looked fine with only minor areas of calking, however while painting, we realized the calking line was needed for a more finished look, so next time I'd calk right away.

Up next: Painting!