Another YHL Moment

I apologize for the huge gap in between posts. Truthfully we have been super busy in baby world- we had 2 baby showers the last few weeks, we were working like crazy to finish the nursery and I've been booked with Dr appointments (nothing bad- but you can expect a post later about them). I thought it might be fun for my first post in a few weeks to be about our journey transforming my mom's junk room into Averie's nursery.

Most of us call my mom a hoarder- but not the dirty trash obsessed kind like on tv- but really she is a keeper of memories (a term i discovered from a friend's instagram) so it was a long and involved process to get her to clean out the room she offered me. However, once we were on a roll boxing things it went pretty quickly. I don't have a picture of the true before, but I here is what it looked like while we were boxing things (most of the large furniture was already removed before the boxing began)

Originally this room was decorated for my little sister as a surprise when she was 9 or 10. She went to visit our grandparents and my mom and i decorated it for her while she was gone. The geographic wall and lanterns/wall hangings were all from her favorite shirt... and while the pattern I painted on the wall was pretty basic it was my first time painting an accent wall and it got me addicted to them (hence our room decals from this post  disclaimer- that room doesn't look anything like that once my husband joined me with all our bedroom furniture) and the upcoming pics of Averie's room. It's not pictured but one of the walls was even covered in chalkboard paint- which was surprisingly easy to cover.

After the room was cleared we realized it needed a face lift. My parent's have lived in this house for over 25 years and haven't been able to do much remodeling to the actual bedrooms so we took the opportunity to change the moulding, repaint and upgrade the closet.

Because of my height and growing belly I did all the bottom edges and the main painting while the hubby did all the top edges. Together we got the whole room painted lilac in about an hour.

Then Kev had to remove all the old moulding- which I didn't help with because well... eew... but it looked pretty easy. He just used a crowbar and we had a pile of scrap moulding in under 10 minutes.

It only took a few cuts, some nails and sealant to attach the new moulding. Our biggest mistake was not painting it BEFORE he attached it. My thinking was he's going to nick it up with the hammer and I would just have to touch it up anyway, but trying to cleanly paint moulding with carpet fighting me was a challenge and it took way longer than it should have. Most moulding choices come primed white- and I guess you could leave it but Kev insisted on covering it with a semi gloss in white to make upkeep easier. I can't believe how much changing the moulding changed the look of the room.

 

My mom and I had gone out and chosen the furniture and ordered it but it was going to be a few weeks before it arrived. We wanted to plan out where we were going to not only place the furniture in the room but where we were going to paint the animals from Averie's bedding on the walls. Kev came up with a great idea: using painters tape to mark the dimensions of the furniture so we could settle on placement. He really is a smarty pants!

 

I just like taking pics of his tooshy ;)

 

Next was the fun part: painting the figurines!!! I love to paint but I was nervous to freehand the figures on the wall so I had my very talented artist hubby draw them for me. Around this time I was taken out of work so I had plenty of time to work on painting them.

 

I had a little help from Harbor kitty

I think my favorite is the giraffe... I told Kev we have to come up with names for them ;)

 

Here is the finished product before the furniture arrived:

I couldn't get a picture of the closet before but basically there were no doors. The closet is quite large and extends almost to the door jamb on the left on the inside so I had kev add an extra poll to give us 2 rows to hang clothes on. We bought these doors from Home Depot and he installed them in about 20 minutes. They match the moulding and eventually we will replace the door to her room with a similar 6-panel door.

 

And here is the final product- complete with furniture and accessories from her showers!

I still cant believe when I look at the pics side by side how different the before and after are... I am so excited to bring her home to her new room! This process was more fun than I had originally thought it would be, and it was a great experience doing it alongside my hubby. If i could find a way to make designing baby rooms into a job I would drop everything and do it!

 

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER