Baby Oskar's Nursery

With my due date rapidly approaching, we have been trying to get the nursery finished.  Between painting walls, refinishing furniture and decorating it has been a process.  However, I think our overall vision of an Antique Car Nursery came through well with Oskar being able to use this room both as an infant and into toddlerhood.

Here is the room before:

And here is the room now:

Paint choices:
Above chair rail: Gravity by Valspar
Below chair rail: Lava Gray by Olympic
Desk, Dresser and chair: Emperor's Silk with Dark Wax by Annie Sloan Chalk Paint

Furniture:
Crib: Ikea 'Gulliver'
Bookshelf: Ikea 'Billy'
Desk, Dresser and chair: Picked up from a neighbor's curb when they were making room for new furniture (was originally white until we refinished it, see makeover here)
Glider and ottoman: Bought from my husband's boss

Wall Art:
Antique truck: Hobby Lobby
Car signs: Antique store, Hobby Lobby and a coworker
Framed car pictures: photos taken by my husband, frames from Ikea

Bedding:
Crib Sheet and Mobile: VROOM by Lambs & Ivy at Buy Buy Baby

Rug:
Play mat: Ikea 'Lekplats'

We can't wait for Baby Oskar to arrive in a few weeks and put the room to use!

Laundry Room Makeover

There is a lot of laundry room makeovers in Blogland and I can understand why.  Ours (as I'm sure most others are) was a boring space. So, we changed it!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We painted stripes on the cabinets, added oil rubbed bronze cabinet handles (from Lowe's), put the liquid detergent in a stylish blue drink dispenser (from Target) and added more storage with blue and brown storage containers (from The Container Store).

First, I worked on the 'L'.  I found scrapbook paper that I liked and traced the L onto the section I wanted and cut it out.  I modge podged the paper to the L.

Then I modge podged twine onto the edges of the L. After that, I covered the entire thing in a layer of modge podge to seal it.

Meanwhile, my husband worked on the cabinets.  He first printed out the 'aundry' in the font we wanted.  He transferred it on to the cabinets by coloring the back of the letters with heavy pencil where he wanted the transfer and then traced the letters from the front.

Then he painted the letters.  Next he taped off where the stripes were going to be.

He painted the small stripe a shade of blue and the larger stripe a shade of brown which he created.

The unfortunate thing was, when he pulled the tape off the brown peeled.  Since he didn't have enough of that same shade, he had to create a new brown and do it again.

After everything dried, we assembled it all.  I transferred the detergent to the dispenser and it has worked really we so far.  We did drill a small hole in the lid of the dispenser to help with the flow of the detergent.  The storage bins gave us more room and cleared up some of the space in the cabinets.  Overall, I'd say we are very happy with the way it turned out.  We would like to replace the old light but haven't done it yet.  Long term, I'd also like to replace the linoleum in the laundry room but that is not high on the priority list right now!

Detail shots:

And again, the AFTER picture:

Cork Board "Run"over

I've had this basic corkboard for years.  It has served it's purpose of holding/displaying things however has always been an eyesore.

Today I finally did something about it!

Most recently it was being used to display a few pictures.  I knew I wanted a way to hang the medals my husband and I have received from running races, as well as a place to display the pictures from those races.  First, I painted the border white.  I also painted these decorative wooden dowels that I would later attach to the sides for the medals.

Then I stenciled "Run Baby Run" on the top of the board in Saffron Yellow.

While that was all drying, I cut a piece of a white Ikea curtain that we used in our wedding reception (we had nine curtains that I have nothing to do with yet).  I sized it by pinning it to the inside of the board and then cutting around the edges.

I took the piece of fabric back off, trimmed the edges a little more and ironed it.  I Modge Podge'd the corkboard and then put the fabric on.  I smoothed the whole surface down and tried to push the edges under the frame.

Once that was smoothed down, I hot glued twine along the edges. (I don't have a picture of that).

Next, I hot glued the dried wooden dowels to the sides of the corkboard.

I hot glued twine around the base of each wooden dowel.

Here is the way it looks after I finished with it:

And here it is hanging on the wall:

And finally serving it's new purpose:

Much better, I think!