7.29.2010

The Nursery: Part I (the big stuff)

After looking through and updating some of the pictures of our house that I have already posted (see link on the right), I realized that I never posted any pictures of my son Alex's room.  This room had been our office before we were expecting our now four year old, Elizabeth.  I cannot seem to find ANY pictures of what the room looked like back then but I did find this oldie of what it looked like when we bought the house but before we moved in.



Check out that light fixture!  They just don't make them like they used to!

Oddly enough, this was the smallest bedroom but had 2 decent closets - the larger rooms had horrible closets - go figure.  Anyway, several years later, Jim built his first set of built-in bookshelves, including a desk under the window, on that back wall.  (Some day I'll dig out those pictures.)  We added a hand-me-down futon and we had a second guest room.

After we found out I was pregnant, this became the obvious nursery.  It was already painted Benjamin Moore Raspberry Truffle (deep red), which we decided to keep since it was a unisex color (we didn't find out the sex of the baby) and we figured the room would go back to being an office some day.

Elizabeth was born in April 2006, and this was became her room - from the first night she was home from the hospital!  

These pictures were taken post renovation when the room got about 3 feet wider and became rectangular instead of its previous awkward L-shape. 



The chair was my dorm room chair from college which I slip-covered in the fun check.  My mom slaved over made the beautiful valence (more on that in a future post), dust ruffle and quilt (on the back of the chair in these pictures).  I made the little curtain covering the lower bookshelf.  The crib was in my parent's condo in Florida when they bought it.  It was perfect (and free!) so they brought it to us. 

The only thing we really added for Alex in 2009 (other than space and a huge closet) was the pine dresser which I found on Craigslist for $50.  Elizabeth's antique dresser is more girly so I decided to keep that in her room (more about that here).  I'll probably paint Alex's dresser at some point but for now it works for what he needs.  The rocking horse was made by Jim's dad for Elizabeth a few years ago.  You can see where Jim inherited his word-working talent!

After our big renovation in 2009 and Alex's birth, this room got a whole lot bigger but it still stayed a nursery - everything we had for a baby already went with the color and we wanted to keep the guest room where it was.  It was really fun to re-think the layout and I had so many more options.  As a reminder, here's the floor plan for the second floor.

As you can see, the glass door you see in the pictures and the floor plan actually connects through our master bedroom closet into our room - very handy for late night calls for Mama and Dada!

Check back next week for more details on our beloved nursery, as well as some new updates!

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