The Evolution of the Baby Room

T minus 5.5 weeks until baby. oy.

What's making it easier is that we made good progress on the nursery over the last month. The amazing Beth came down and we painted for three days straight over President's Weekend. Thanks to Pandora Radio (AKON!) and a little bit of gossiping, we stayed sane and did a pretty good job. The weekend of March 12 was Baby Shower #1 and hauling some second-hand furniture back from MA. And this past weekend was for putting everything away!

But let's start at the beginning . . .

When we moved in, there was a creepy Dumbo mural on the walls (many of the little critters were cute, but I think Dumbo is SCARY!).

Bye Bye Dumbo!

The door was freakin ADORABLE!!! Of course it was also covered in about 7 layers of lead-paint (Chris has been stripping the door frames around the rest of the apartment, and the numbers of layers we found just screams toxic paint!), so door got tossed. I hope to recreate the barn-door effect on the new one, but we'll see.

Anyway, the room needed a new decor, and on a trip to the New York Public Library, I found my inspiration.

I have a few of the Winnie the Pooh books with the original illustrations, so I scanned them in and plotted them around the room.

(click for larger image)

My amazing friend Beth came down over President's Day and we got to work. She had a few tips up her sleeve too!

1) Use a projector to display the image on the wall and trace.

Chris snagged a digital one from work, so we could display the scanned images right from the laptop (and crop and edit quickly if needed) instead of fumbling with overheads and transparencies.

2) Use watercolor crayons to trace the image, so it can be washed off afterwards.

So over three days, we traced on our images and painted.

Pooh and Balloon, the Little Back Rain Cloud . . .

    

  

Pooh and Piglet . . .

    

    

Piglet's House . . .

    

    

Pooh Climbing the Tree . . .

    

    

Owl's House . . . 

    

    

 

And the crew . . .

Tigger . . .

  

  

Rabbit . . .

  

  

Eeyore . . .

    

Christpher Robin . . .

  

Finishing Touches:

Trim . . . 

Curtains and blinds . . .






Oh, and baby needs furniture. My mother made me promise not to buy/register for anything until I cleaned out the extra stuff she had at her house.





Finally, time to put everything in place and away!






The whole package . . .

The only things left to do:

1) Get a new grate for over the radiator

(the original one was all dented and sharp)

2) The curtains over the high shelves are not screwed in very tight. One side actually ripped the anchor out of the wall. Chris wants to replace all of them.

3) Baby Shower #2 is this coming weekend. After that, we'll get the rest of what we need and finish up!