How Hard Can it Be?

Thanks for all the well wishes from our little announcement!  We have started on the nursery, but a final after is a ways away.  We we have plenty of time and a whole lots of projects.

Honestly I had been thinking about the nursery since before we were even thinking about kids.  Because it is such a fun room and you can get away with cute things that would look silly anywhere else. 

In browsing all sorts of inspiration pictures, I knew I wanted some sort or built-in or architectural feature to add to our boxy room with two plain windows.

Since I knew the window wall was wasted space in terms of furniture placement, I came up with a “brilliant” idea of a built-in window seat.

Easy peasy right?

Well first the ceiling had to be scraped of the popcorn…and the stains.  Which, in my delicate state, I got to sleep through while Derek did the dirty work.

I did help him tarp everything though.

If you have never scraped popcorn, it is a very messy and gross job.  But it is also pretty easy.  Just dowse the ceiling with water from a garden sprayer, wait a couple minutes and scrape.

And it all falls down on you.

Or Derek in this case.

After we cleaned up that mess, it was time to make more messes with moving vents, light switches, and light fixtures to accommodate the new window seat.  Didn’t really envision that mess in the whole “hey let’s add a window seat” idea.

Luckily Derek’s step dad was along for this project and we could not have done it without him.  Drywalling is an art form we have not mastered and he took care of skim coating the ceiling, running new electrical, and patching all the wholes.  Not to mention the whole window seat thing.  He was invaluable.

After the drywall was done, it was time for primer and paint.  I planned a gender neutral aqua and orange color scheme, but I am sad to admit that I did not follow my own rule of painting a test spot on the wall and deciding on a color before buying two gallons of it.

Nope, I had figured I had picked enough paint out at this point that I could skip that step.  So I bought two gallons of my teal and let Derek handle the painting while I took another nap.

But after cutting in all the corners, he was very smart to wake me up because he knew it was not what I wanted.  A very pretty sage, but not a teal.  So we had to go buy two new gallons of paint.  I am never breaking my own rule again.  It is an expensive rule to break.  Here is the new teal on top of the wrong sage.

After the painting issue, the window seat was finally ready to go in. 

I wish we had a detailed window seat how to.  But it was so custom to our space and went through many redesigns during the install that it is not the case.  But I have lots of step by step pictures.

First the bookshelves went in…..

And then the facing pieces and the bottom (while it was blizzarding outside)…..

And then the lids and the crown molding.

The lids flip up for toy storage….

And there is a curtain rod built in behind the crown molding.  I plan on hanging full length drapes so the sides of the book shelves are hidden and I can try to hide that they are different sizes.

And I can pull them all the way across to block all light.  And when the baby gets older, the cushions can come off the tops and it can be used for a stage.

Now we are in the unglamorous section of the project of filling holes and painting.  Everything will be white including those windows. 

Ugh window painting…..

I think it is time for another nap.