nursery

You may recall the peek inside the nursery from a while back. We finished the room shortly thereafter and the little guy arrived in September; but the first-time parent thing kicked in and it's taken us a while to finally capture some pictures of the room and get this post together.

We didn't stray too far from our design board, just the typical subsitutions when you can't source a certain product, find something better or simply don't want to spend the money on another one (I'm talking to you, Eicho Crib).

Although my wife made a lot of the design calls, let's face it, the true foreman on the job was our cat. Big thanks to Chance for your excellent leadership throughout this facelift of a project!

Let's talk paint first. This room had a short-lived stint as an office, whose walls were painted using Behr's Ultra Pure White so we would have a blank slate to work with later. So all of the white you see in the nursery remained the same. The major splash of color came in a deep blue feature wall, which would anchor the white crib. We choose PPG's pure performance -- its a zero VOC paint that received excellent feedback on various online professional painter forums. I echo these reviews -- excellent coverage, true color and no noticable odor. Cobalt Stone is the proper name of the blue, and Leap Frog the green, which you'll see in later pictures.

We'll start the tour of this small room at the aforementioned crib. Regular readers of Apartment Therapy's ohdeedoh should recognize this at the ever-popular, low-budget/high-quality BabyMod Parklane. We loved the clean, simple, modern-look. And the drawer on the bottom added valuable storage in the small space. Speaking of that drawer, it's a hack of sorts, although the only thing I did was slap on a few coats of the Ultra Pure White High-Gloss to cover the original honey-stained drawer front. The rug, curtains, rod and blackout shade are all IKEA grabs. My wife made a skirt for the crib (needed when raised to the highest mattress position) using the excess fabric from the curtins. Oh...and the perfectly modern mobile is the Big Dipper Baby Mobile (small) from The Wonderland Studio.

We thought about painting a tree on the wall, but decided that we liked the clean lines of a vinyl wall decal from Leen the Graphics Queen. Leen was great in working with us on a custom size and sent out tons of color samples before we placed the order.

A simple turn of the head takes us to the next stop on our tour. I could make up a catchy name for this corner like "the reading nook" or the "chill corner," but let's face it, when the boy was little (0-6 months), we rocked him to sleep and did a few feedings on the IKEA rocker -- the IKEA bookcase just looked cool. Now that he's bigger (8 months), he pulls himself up and stands here by himself, tortures the cats when they lay on the rocker and pulls most of the books off the shelves and toys out of the baskets; and that's only when he's not trying to get into the trash can next to the dresser (which you haven't seen yet).

The rocker, which I suspect has been discontinued because I can't find it on the website, is fairly comfrontable for putting the kid to sleep, but not so much when you need to get up while holding said kid -- its a bit low to the ground and deep in the seat. We're looking forward to the book readings that are sure to happen in the future. You know, the ones where the kid can jump on and off your lap without you having to pick them up and put them back down!

Also note the bear on the bottom shelf -- mine from when I was a kid. His name is Bandit, after the dog on Jonny Quest (one of my childhood cartoon favs)!

A closer inspection of the featured art in this corner reveals more vinyl, this time Birds On A Wire Squares from Byrdie Graphics. In their truest sense, they are meant to be adhered directly to a painted wall, but we wanted to add a bit of visual interest to the wall. So we purchased a sheet of birch plywood from the Home Depot and had them cut it down into squares. After a bit of sanding, we slapped on the Leap Frog paint, installed the hanging hardware and went about hanging them as level as possible. No magic or special tricks to speak of, just a Hang & Level, a touch of math and a little patience! 

Let's see...modern piggy bank from Amazon.com (I believe) and the beautiful wooden stacking toy from Little Sapling Toys. Paired with some plastic greenery and one of our favorite reads, no matter your age!

Our final stop on this short tour does require one to turn in place. Hopefully you're not exhausted, yet? IKEA MANDAL -- this dresser not only looks great, but it's a pretty solid piece, as far as IKEA furniture goes -- solid birch casing with solid birch drawer sides and backs. A pretty nice piece that should take us well into the teenage years. But make no mistake about it, the star here is the BabySmart Cooshee Changer (Lime). We absolutely, 100% love it, recommend it and can't imagine diaper changes without it. 

We leave you with an unstagged shot of what the nursery looks like on a pretty average day, just imagine a few more books and toys strewn around the floor these days!

And that's it that's all that's all there is...

nap

nap, originally uploaded by defythegray.

We've been taking a nap of sorts here at Kingswood Redux over the past couple of months.

You might recall that I dreaded getting some quotes on having custom kitchen cabinet doors built to use with our existing cabinet frames. I thought it would be a good way to make use of what are solidly-constructed frame units (even though they do not have the versalitility of modern cabinents). Well, I finally got around to calling a few guys -- some weren't even interested, but I did get two guys to come out and take a look. They both seemed excited and had good experience and I was excited about getting some ballparks from them...but the quotes never came back. I followed up with them for a little over a month, but nothing. I guess they're busy...or something.

By the time I finally gave up on the follow-ups, I realized the kitchen remodel was not going to happen before our first child was born. So I switched gears to focus on the nursery and getting myself and my wife prepared for the birth of our little guy.

That all went down really well and our son was born on September 3. I suspect the next post will be a feature on the nursery and might even feature an appearence or two from the little man. Meanwhile, the haze of the first two weeks of his life is beginning to lift and we're thinking about going the Ikea kitchen route, maybe sometime this winter -- whenever we feel like we have a handle on our new life with him!

It's been a long time...

It's been a long time

I shouldn't a left you

Without a dope beat to step to

I feel like I've been here before: Checking in after a long winter that was short on daylight and remodeling progress.  When we last left you, we had just completed the half bathroom and the kitchen was next on our list. Well...it still is, but our regularly scheduled remodeling plans have been pleasantly interrupted in order to convert the office into a nursery.  That's right -- exciting times ahead (on so many different levels).

Here's a look at the preliminary design board that I threw together about two months ago in order to surprise my parents with the news.  Quite a bit has changed since then, but this gives a peek into the general direction we are going:

We put the board together before we knew we were having a boy, but we were generally going for a fun, modern and gender-neutral nursery. 

As mentioned above, the kitchen is still technically the next project, its just been rough getting motivated to actually start it.  Most of the material selections have been made, its just making the calls to get some quotes on new cabinet doors that seem to be holding me up -- just don't want to deal with it. Its one of those things where once I make the first call, I suspect everything will fall into place.  With our first child on the way, at least we I have a (somewhat) solid deadline!

Stay tuned (and thanks for visiting)...