Decorating extravaganza

I love getting to redecorate a room. I find a great deal of joy in getting to start with a clean slate (i.e. a completely empty room) and fancy it all up. I think this mostly comes from my tendency to be neat and tidy with everything nicely organized. It's easy to get there if you're building from the ground up so to speak. Of course, it's another thing to keep it that way, but that is an entirely different blog post.

So the time finally came when Cory and I could start thinking about decorating the nursery since we found out we're expecting a girl. I joked with him that I'd dreamed more about one day decorating my nursery than about my wedding when I was a little girl. I don't think that is completely true, but I'm not that much into fairy tales so there wasn't a lot to dream about when it came to visions of my wedding. I pretty much knew what I wanted and how to execute it. But, I digress. Back to nursery talk!

Several factors were in place to make it possible to get going on the nursery. First, I'm between semesters in school so I have no academic pressures looming overhead. Second, even though Cory is in class right now, he was caught up on work and could afford to shift his focus for the most part. Last, I took New Year's Eve off in addition to being off New Year's Day so we had a nice long weekend to be handy around the house. It also didn't hurt that we decided on fabric to make the bedding from which impacted how we planned to paint. (I really should add here that by "we" I mean "I" because Cory left the fabric picking to me since discovering that he's getting a daughter instead of a son. He basically hates pink, and I couldn't promise him that I'd be able to find something I was happy with that was completely devoid of all shades of pink. So we compromised. I got to pick whatever I wanted for our daughter now, and later, when we have a son, he gets to design a jungle nursery complete with a huge tree mural. So there you have it.)

So with fabric swatches in hand we headed to the store to pick out paint ... a scary undertaking as Cory and I have a history of being poor paint picker-outers. I had a hard time communicating exactly what it was I pictured in my head. It was definitely two-toned with a darker shade under a lighter shade of the same color and white chair rail separating the two. I wasn't happy with any two shades of any one color to really go that route so we had to be more imaginative. We decided to use one color from the fabric, in this case green, as the bottom half of the wall and, well, another color from the fabric, but just a toned-down version - a very light yellow. After making the guy at the paint counter wait while we thought about it "one last time," we finally just said, "Mix it before we change our minds." Apprehensive as we were, Cory and I crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. And the best was better than we could have ever imagined!

It looks GREAT! ... if I do say so myself. :) The whole project really didn't even take all that long except for waiting on the chair rails to dry after painting them with oil-based paint to match the door and window frames. Man, that stuff is messy and takes ages to dry completely. Not a good combo for the two of us who tend to get a little impatient with weekend warrior projects. Cory handled the yellow since it required a bunch of climbing up and down the ladder, and I took care of the green. Those two were knocked out in the matter of a couple of hours minus the inevitable touch-ups from nailing up and caulking the chair rail. Once it was finally nailed up, we quickly wrapped up all the little odds and ends to make the whole room look perfect. And then catastrophe hit.

Ok, quick background story to help you understand. Prior to becoming a nursery, this particular room was Cory's man cave. He had started painting a huge ... and I do mean HUGE ... mural on one wall. Even though he had taped it off around the other walls, some paint still managed to bleed under the tape as we know paint has a tendency to do. Therefore, there were some spots on the ceiling that needed to be touched up. When we bought the house, the entire place was painted with flat eggshell water-based paint so that's still what covers the ceilings in all the rooms we've painted thusfar. Luckily, the contractors left a quart behind so it wasn't a big deal for us to crack it open to do these touch-ups. Cory used a plastic paint tray to poor out most of the water so that he was left with a slightly thicker concentration of paint. Ceiling got fixed in a flash and all that remained was cleaning up the few tools left in the room and that plastic tray of tinted water.

Cory leaned over and carefully started to pick up the tray when it suddenly cracked. Paint started to pour out onto the carpet, and I panicked! My perfect, clean slate was being tainted! Cory quickly sat it down on a nearby plastic sack and I ran to get something to clean it up with. The first trip took me only to get a towel and the Resolve. Cory was quick to point out that a trash bag would be helpful or it was just going to continue to ruin the carpet. Good thinkin', babe! So I ran back to the pantry, got a trash bag, ran back to the nursery, and we scooped up the plastic tray and sack full of paint. My single towel and dwindling stock of Resolve was no match. I had to break out the big guns ... the carpet shampooer.

It took some time, but I think it's gonna be ok. I checked it this morning, and while I know paint was spilled there, it's likely that no one else would ever notice ... especially the baby. I guess it's fortunate that our carpet is also eggshell colored so at least the paint matches it. :)

I have fabric cut out to make a curtain, which I'm about to go work on right now (or at least after I eat some delicious chicken and dumplings), and as soon as it's done, pictures will be posted (at least one anyway) for all to see. It's a pretty easy pattern so I anticipate it being finished this evening. And if that's the case, I might just have another double-post day!