Progress: The Nursery

The nursery has been painted and put back together for a few weeks now. The paint smell is gone. It is just waiting on the final decorative touches. We used VOC-free paint from Benjamin Moore but the room still smelled freshly painted until recently.

A while back, the nursery looked like this:

Drab brown and cream walls with a teddy bear border that N had pulled off in many spots. Holes in the wall from the crib rubbing against it and more spots where wall decor had been hung by previous owners.

$200 later after paint and painting supplies and a major scrub down of the furniture with soapy water and a cloth, it looks like this:

We could've spent a little less on the paint but we went with Benjamin Moore because we've liked the quality of the paint and found it holds up better than the times we've used the Home Depot brands. After the mudding and sanding, the room needed two coats of primer, the trim was also a cream colour rather than white.  We went with a VOC-free primer from Home Depot just to save a wee bit of money. The paint colour we went with was Benjamin Moore's Escarpment which I absolutely love.  The trim we painted to match the rest of the trim in the newer painted areas of our house - Decorator's White - in more of a gloss finish. The blinds were there from before and are navy. I really like how the navy looks with the grey walls. I plan on having more navy accents around the room along with yellow (the colour of a crib blanket we received as a gift from my hubby's godmother before B was born and that we have used for both older boys).

I cleaned up the rocking chair, moved it into the room, and washed some baby clothes but have yet to really add any additional decor to the room. I'm so picky. I really don't want to spend more than $300 on the nursery since that is the max we spent including paint with the other boys rooms and everything I look at seems unnecessary. For example, neither of the boys had a crib bedding set - only a good quality soft fitted crib sheet and blankets. They also didn't have a mobile either. We got one as a gift when B was born but it didn't fit on the crib and we never replaced it thinking it was better to avoid possible confusion from encouraging the baby to be alert and focused on the mobile in bed rather than sleeping.

Part of me wants to leave the room without a lot of decor so that we can personalize it once he gets here and it can happen organically. One thing the big boys have each done is chosen a few of their stuffed animals to give to their new baby brother. I'll have to find a space for these in the room. I do also still want to hang a shelf on the wall to hold the picture frame containing his ultrasound photo and the cute retro TV picture frame I purchased awhile back, along with any keepsakes he might receive as gifts. My only issue with holding off on more decor is that the walls look so bare but I don't want to buy wall decor just to have something there. I want everything that goes into the nursery to have purpose and/or meaning and not just be a temporary treatment.

Other things I actually need to buy for the room are a fitted crib sheet, mattress pad, and change pad cover (nearly all of our changes with both boys were done in the nursery on the change pad). I threw out the old ones since they were stained and well worn from almost 6 years of consecutive use. Luckily this only involves a trip to the store so the baby could really come at any time now though we're hoping he still holds off at least another couple of weeks to make it to full term.