A year ago, with the mustardy brown walls...
Beginning to paint...
Before (and after) Josephine was born, we worked on painting her room, repairing and finishing the trim, installing a ceiling fan, blinds, shelves, curtains, etc. Also added paneling to the front facade of the box seats, which house my tools. I was mistakenly excited when it all was "finished." In the end, it seems like one of my constant house projects is her nursery. Simply attempting to keep Josephine's room safe for her developing abilities has taken a ridiculous amount of attention. And goodness knows the rest of the house isn't safe, so I at least have to stay on top of this one area.
I knew from the start that once she started crawling I'd have to overhaul the original set-up, which was kind of thrown together from pieces we already had, were given, or found secondhand. I've been trying to find a picture of the room mid-progress, but can't find a good example. (Unsurprisingly, all the photos in her room since she's been born have apparently been of
her).
In short, though, we had to replace the original changing table (our spice rack) with another craigslist find, because I was worried she'd pull the light metal framed structure over on top of her. I had to make a heavy box (out of leftover living room paneling-- which was left over from Sean's parents' project) to house the diaper pail which she became disgustingly attracted to. I sewed seat cushions for the box seats with the intent of using them as barricades to keep her out of drawers during the day (dressers gifted from the lovely and AWESOME Beth). In the end, I had to rearrange everything to keep all drawers out of her reach, while hiding outlets with furniture, and in a matter of weeks she'd developed the ability to just pull down the barricades or barge through them.
Sigh.
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My home remedy having failed, the pillows went back on the box seats, and we ordered an expandable gate that stretches from the back leg of the crib and attaches to the side of the changing table.
Open, it's totally out of the way:
Here it is closed off (far better than the cushions):
It's been really helpful to have a space where she can have free reign and not be able to get into any trouble. She loves reading her books now, and can entertain herself quite well in that little corralled space. As long as I'm not walking back and forth through the room, and she's not under any physical duress such as teething or illness, she'll be totally content for even up to an hour! Trouble is, to get things done, I usually have to walk through her room (not only does it hold most of my tools, her room connects the house to the garage [more tools and laundry room]). Since I can't easily access any of that while she's napping, I have to access it while she's awake, which means I usually wind up disturbing her solo play time and frustrating both of us! I have pie-in-the-sky dreams of creating another entry into the garage through a closed-in utility room, via the living room, but there is MUCH to get done on other projects before starting such a fresh, new, huge project like that.
But I digress. Back to the nursery. Here's the rocker that my parents refurbished for us! It's been around a while-- they used it with my siblings and I when we were babies. We love it!
Lastly, here are two overview shots. It's a long narrow room because it used to be half of a two car garage; the previous owner closed in this half. So this is looking down into the room:
And this is the view from by the window, looking up towards the garage door and previously mentioned
cabinets.
Okay, so there's one room's renovations documented! I still need to post the laundry room, master bedroom, and living room. And I still need to actually
DO all the rest (two bathrooms, two bedrooms, kitchen and dining, foyer, landing, and staircase)! Yeah, my closed-in utility room might have to wait a while... ;-)
On the other hand, I don't mind having a Valentine other than grandmas, so it was nice for Sean and I to leave Josephine with my parents and Janell and go to the ballet and dinner. It's usually one of those days like New Year's Eve for us-- why bother???? As Sean says, you can walk in to the same restaurant the very next day WITHOUT making reservations a month in advance and dealing with star-struck crowds. Plus, without a doubt, all the commercialism is disgusting.
