Boy Oh Boy, Nursery: Guest

This weekend my sister is coming over to help plan and design the new nursery and change John’s room into hig ‘big boy’ room. My sister is an interior designer (check out her design LIFE blog here!) so I am really excited because I know the rooms will turn out great. I decided to reminisce a little and share how we ‘remodeled’ and decorated John’s current nursery.

{SIDENOTE! 🙂 So, my sister helped me a tad with John John’s nursery. As in she helped hang the drapes. So I am making a note of full disclosure that if you think the nursery isn’t at a ‘professional level’ it is because lil ol’ me did it…not an interior designer! Want to see what my sister did with her baby’s nursery? See her post here! She used way more fancy stuff than I did!}

Back on track now…

When we moved into our house, this room was a kid’s room. It had some weird chair rail that was super high (do you even still call it a chair rail when it is that high!?) and I didn’t like how the room was painted. We made it into our guest bedroom for a little while before we really knew what to do with it.

The summer before I got pregnant, we decided to start ‘remodeling’ the room so it could still be a guest bedroom but also ready to be a nursery when we needed it. We took off the chair rail, baseboards, and trim around the doors and replaced it with wider baseboards and prettier trim. That was not fun since most of the walls weren’t straight so Brad had some choice words when trying to get the baseboards up! We also added beadboard which was also a not-so-fun project since you had to nail each indvidual piece to the wall. Talk about major headache! After going back and putting wood putty over all the nails and sanding, we were able to paint the trim and beadboard an off white color.

We decided to paint the walls green so it would fit for a boy or girl nursery. How cute to have a blue and green room or pink and green room! Unfortunately, I HATED how it looked and secretly knew I would ask Brad to change the color once I knew if we were having a boy or girl. 🙂

So, once I was actually pregnant and found out I was having a boy, we repainted the walls a light blue to match John’s bedding. I LOVE how the color turned out. So much better than the ugly green! Brad was so sweet to repaint it while I was at a football game with my cheerleading squad.

My biggest issue with the room was the window. The window is huge and is rounded at the top which made buying anything pre-made very difficult…and expensive. Also, since the window is so long, it was hard to find long enough drapes. My sister helped me take pre-made drapes from Restoration Hardware and make them look more custom-made. Even though they were a tad pricey, I love the drapes because they are a neutral color and are black-out lined which is perfect for a baby’s room. And actually, these drapes aren’t quite long enough, but we were able to hide that fact with the ‘custom’ valence. Brad made a box out of wood (that my sister designed and gave custom measurements for) and hung it from the ceiling. Then my sister and I used the premade valance to staple it to the box, creating a box pleat in the front. I love that it wraps around the drapery panels and it makes the window look so big! We also later hung sheers behind the panels going across the window for when I want to pull back the drapes to let light in. Those sheers are super cheap from IKEA, but also are not very pretty. 🙂 Oh well- no one will be examining my sheers anytime soon!

For the wall above John’s crib, I got letters from Michael’s and painted them to match John’s room. Of course, after I painted them, I started entering the blog world and read how to decorate letters using scrapbook paper and modgepodge which probably would have been way cuter than how my letters turned out!

Throw in a crib, dresser, super awesome swivel rocker chair, rug, bookshelf, special artwork from grandpa, and some garage sale prints and you have yourself a nursery! I love how the room turned out and am sad that John is already old enough to need a new room!