Texas House : Kalia's Nursery Suite

For many of you, Kalia's nursery was what brought you over to my blog in the first place.  Here it is at our last house :

And here's what it started with there :

Yeah, about a million times better.  Maybe 2 million.  We did so many DIY projects in there, it was definitely a labor of love.

Kalia hasn't adjusted so well to the move.  We were in an apartment for a month, which was so confusing to her.  She's at that awkward age where she remembers stuff, knows what she wants, but can't exactly express it or her emotions that she's feeling.  The first time she talked to any other little kid since the first week of us being here was the 4th of July.  She still won't talk to adults.

So, we knew it was so important to get her room set up just the way it was before asap.  We were so so thankful that my MIL came to help out with the move.  It allowed us to paint Kalia's room prior to the movers showing up with our stuff (walls moonshine by benjamin moore and closet lucerne by benjamin moore), and on day 2 of living there, get everything on the walls the exact way it was before.  Here's what we started with.  Much better than the above before picture!

And here's what it looks like when you walk in :

I did say previously that those bookshelves would stay if we ever left our Florida house.  I never really thought we'd leave when I said that though.  They came with us.

The wall here is a little bit smaller so we had to cut them down by about 8 inches.  I think they're my most favorite thing still.

The ABC wall is Kalia's favorite.  She asked for it nonstop when we were in the apartment.  When we moved here that was the first thing she asked for "ABC's on the wall!!!".  Chris didn't really want to put 26 more holes in the wall, but Kalia and I outnumber him!

Here is the view from Kalia's closet on the other side of the room.

I realize the curtains look like high-waters.  They work for now, and I really do love the curtains, just wish they were longer.  I'll probably sew something on there when they start to bother me too much.  When she's ready for her big girl bed, one of the daybeds will go where the dresser is, and the dresser will move to the other wall.  I still don't love the cream trim, and all of my accents are white though.  If I win the lottery I'll pay someone to paint all of the doors, shutters, and trim white.  Gotta get on playing first!

We built the bookshelves, dresser, and the K with my maternity pictures of Kalia on there. All of that is linked up in Kalia's initial nursery tour here.

Here's the view to the left of the crib.

You can see the picture frame with fabric and mini clothes pins I did for her before she was born.  I want to hang them closer together, they bug me as is.  We spaced them a little bit too far apart.

Kalia's closet was "prettier" at the last house, but she's got more room with it here.  She loves that little mirror down there, and it's anchored on with a nail on either side, so I'm not worried about it going anywhere.  That's the toy box we built for her along with the no sew cushion I made.

Across from her room is her bathroom.  She loves the big tub in our bathroom, so I haven't touched this room yet.  I imagine it'll stay pretty plain for a little while, although she was begging me to get these bobble headed monkeys for her bathroom decor at bed, bath, and beyond the other day.  Already?!

So that's it!  Kalia's nursery.  What do you guys think?  It's still one of my favorite rooms in the house!   It is funny / odd to me that the moonshine gray color reads more blue in this house than in the last one.  I don't know if that's because the ceilings are all painted that almond color or just different light or what.  It's so different how almost every ceiling in the Texas houses that we looked at were painted the same as the wall color.  I had that same gray in Kalia's room, the in-law suite, the laundry room, our bathroom, and the half bath at the old house and it definitely didn't have a blue hue to it in any of those rooms.  Funny how paint does that!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Happy Monday!

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Nursery Room - Finished Dresser

I'm so happy to say, Kalia's dresser is finally finished!  It took us a few solid weekends to build it, and it took lots of days and nights in the garage to get it finished paint wise, but it's done!  Painting was about a billion step process...so get ready for an overloaded picture post!

First up, we taped and primed the dresser and the drawers.  We used Kilz water based primer...I don't really prefer this over other primers in general, but I need to use water based because of Kalia, so it gets the job done.

Next up, we painted the dresser with two coats of the same blue from Kalia's closet.  I think this picture is just the first coat, so just picture the second coat with a little bit deeper of a color!

Here's where the fun part came in, and Chris exited stage right.  Well, here's where the creative part came in anyways!  I didn't exactly know what I wanted the finished product of this to look like.  I wanted to tie in all of the exisiting pieces in Kalia's nursery...the crib, the daybed, the alphabet wall, the bookshelves, and her closet system.

First I attempted to dry brush on some grey paint and followed that up with more dry brushing of a mix of white and the same blue that her dresser is painted, and distressed the edges of the drawers.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't the look I was going for.  And replicating this on the entire dresser was going to be a pain in my rear.

Next, I painted over a different drawer front with the grey color from her walls...

And then when that dried, I sanded both drawer faces down to see if I liked either one of those looks.  I didn't worry about getting an even coat of the grey above because I knew I planned on sanding to allow the blue to show back through.

Hmph.  Both of these are sort of cool in their own rights, but still not the look I was going for.  Third time was a charm though!  I decided I wanted something a bit more subtle, but that still added depth and dimension to the piece, so I mixed up a 'white wash' (really a grey/blue wash) of 8 parts water, 3/4 parts grey and 1/4 part blue.

I didn't worry too much about the paint brush getting fully dry.  I made sure I wasn't slopping water around everywhere, and then wiped this on the drawer front.

Then I took a soft rag and wiped off the excess in the direction of the wood.

To end up with this :

Which I finally liked!  After I repainted over my other two experiment drawers with the blue again, I applied this white wash to all of the drawers and the entire dresser.  I actually had to have Chris do the white wash to the bottom shelf because I couldn't handle squatting or lying down with my new large and in charge body I'm carrying around these days.  I tried to just roll with whatever outcome happened...worst case, we can go back and refinish this dresser later!

Next up, I wanted to add glaze.  I wanted sort of a modern vintage feel, and I debated about going back and taking my sander to the edges of everything, but decided since we had done such a nice job at avoiding drips and painting those edges, I'd just add the glaze for now, and perhaps go back and distress later.  You know, in case I'm bored and need something else to do ... ha!

I added glaze to the entire drawer, and wiped off the glaze from the front, but left the glaze concentrated around the edges.

I wanted to leave a thick glaze border around the edges, but didn't want a clean line of glaze, so I used an old tee-shirt, and pushed the glaze to the edges of the drawer fronts until I had something I was happy with.

The glazing was the biggest pain in the rear part of this whole project.  I know this look isn't for everyone, but it definitely gave me the look I was going for.  I did this for all five drawer faces...here's the three small ones finished :

I feel like the glaze makes the blue pop against it.  After these were done, I glazed around the edges of the entire dresser.  Holy lots of work!!  Chris had to do the bottom shelf again, so he's learned a bit of painting technique.  I think he's on par with building, but his patience hasn't quite mastered the finishing work just yet!

At this point I stopped taking step by step pictures.  We had to move the dresser indoors because the AC people needed the garage, and I was just so ready to get this thing DONE!  We painted three coats of polycrilic on the top of the dresser and the drawer faces, and everywhere else got two coats.  I sanded with 220 grit sandpaper inbetween each coat.

On Saturday night, we installed the handles on the dresser, and I can't explain how happy I was to finally move the finished product into Kalia's nursery!

Ready to see how it turned out?!

TADA!!!!

Pottery Barn had sent me a $25 off $50 coupon, so I ordered three different sets of handles, but decided these ones tied in best with her room.  They give the straight lined dresser a little bit more of a feminine feel and tie in nicely with her crib.

I also like that they fit the 'feel' of the dresser and compliment the glazing really well.

I added two of the baskets that I had gotten from my baby shower to the bottom of the dresser, and then put up these two picture frames I picked up a little while back from Z-Gallerie.  I'll put pictures in there before too long.

The diapers in the basket on the right are from the diaper cake I also received at my baby shower.  Diaper cakes are so fun as decoration, but man oh man, unrolling a million newborn sized diapers sure is a lot of work!

Here's the view when you first walk in Kalia's room:

And here's how the the dresser ties in with the crib :

Here's how it ties in with the daybed and alphabet wall :

And here's an attempted shot at how the three tie in together.  It's not the best, but you get the idea!

Next up for the nursery...adding wall decor above this dresser!  Hopefully I can work on most of that project without causing too much stress on my back.  I started my 8 month of pregnancy today...time is a tickin'!

So what do you think?  Do you like the final outcome of the dresser?!  Every time we walk into her room, we love it more and more.  This nursery sure has been a labor of love!

One reminder ... here's where we started with this wall :

Whew!  I'm exhausted just looking at how far we've come!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Happy Monday!

To see all things nursery related, click here.  To see the paint colors I used, click here and scroll to the bottom.

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Nursery Room - Biggest Build Yet!

Chris and I have been working on our latest biggest project for the past three weekends.  It's that big.  And it took that much work.

We're obviously not making Kalia's crib (for safety reasons), and I have no idea how we'd make a glider (which my super sweet hubs and mother-in-law got me for my bday!!), so the last big/main thing we need, besides decorations of course, is a changing table.

But I didn't really want a changing table...Kalia's room has space for a dresser, and part of my goal when designing this nursery was to design it in such a way that the room would grow with her.  So I scoured craigslist to try to find one that I liked to redo...and I failed.  The cheapest one I could find that was solid wood was $150.

I, of course, went looking at Ana White's website to see if she had any plans for a dresser.  And she did!  I told Chris we could just build one, and to my complete surprise, instead of telling me I was crazy, he said "sounds good!".  Woohoo!!

We followed Ana's plans to the T to build the frame of the dresser.  Instead of having Home Depot cut all of our wood for us, we just had them cut the full sheets of plywood down to 1x16 boards, and then we did all of the rest of our cuts ourselves.  We knew how important it would be to keep the entire thing square, so we wanted to make sure our cuts were as close to perfect as possible.

We glued, wood filled, and used a square to make sure we were level on both sides in-between each step.  We also sanded in-between almost each step, which is unusual for us.  We took our time building this in hopes that it would all turn out well.

After about an eight hour day of building, gluing, nailing, and sanding, we had this :

Isn't she a beauty?!?!

After this, everything got a whole lot more tricky.  We wanted to make drawers with metal drawer glides.  Because this is going in Kalia's room, and will get lots and lots of wear and tear, our thoughts were that the drawer glides would hold up longer and be easier to use than just having the wood slide against the wood.

We went to Home Depot, bought 5 sets of metal drawer glides for about 7$ a piece, and installed them to the frame of the drawer opening.

These drawer glides came with instructions on how to measure your drawer to account for the width of the actual drawer glides themselves, and the height of the back, to account for the fact that the wheel on your drawer is going to go up over top of the glide wheel in your dresser.  Easy peasy, right?  Wrong.  They were off on these measurements by about 1/8" total (1/16th on either side), which may seem small, but being exact with drawers matters.

After figuring all of this out, sanding, sanding, sanding, and finally just taking apart and rebuilding one of the drawers, we finally got a system figured out.  We made sure to use our square for each drawer we were building.

After all of the drawers were built, I rubbed two coats of polyurethane on the insides and sides of the drawers (we had yet to put the faces on)...

Ah yes, I'm looking quite large in in charge these days!  Nothing like building a dresser at 7 1/2 months pregnant!

While Chris ran the sander, for the millionth time, along the body of the dresser.

Next up was the finishing work...putting the actual faces on the dresser!  I applied a bead of glue to the outside where the face was going to attach.

For the top drawers, to keep everything even, we wanted to leave 1/8" gap around each edge of the face.  We searched all over the garage and came up with stacking two of our paint supply plastic stick thingies (I use them when I'm trimming the baseboards on the wood floor, but I have no idea what they're actually called), and using that to hold the bottom of the drawer level.  Then Chris used the nail gun to shoot the face to the actual drawer base.

There was a lot of holding our breath during this phase...so nerve wracking!!  Minus taking this picture, my face was peering in the back of the dresser telling Chris "you got it!!  The nail didn't go into the dresser...woot!"

Once the bottom was nailed in, we pulled out the drawer, and Chris pushed the nail gun as tight as he could to the face and attached it.

Then we stood back and admired our work...one down, four to go!

The bottom drawers actually had almost 1/4'' spacing on either side.  Most boards measure about 1/2'' smaller than what they say...so, for example, a 1x2 is really 1 inch by 1.5 inches.  A 1x6 board is really 1 inch by 5 1/2 inches.  Well, apparently once you get to a 1x8 board, they start measuring 3/4'' off.  It's due to the drying / shrinking when they actually cut the lumber (google it if you're really interested!!), but initially we thought we had bought bad 1x8 boards from Home Depot.  Nope!  Our spacing around our larger drawers was just slightly bigger.  We actually used our old tile spacers to hold those up and nail them in place.

And wala!  A fully built dresser!

There's actually one drawer on here that slipped (top left) while we were nailing it in.  After this was all together, I sanded and sanded and sanded till I was happy with the outcome (with the drawer faces in, after applying wood filler to all of our nail holes). 

Here's our new pretty drawers :

You can tell that the inside and sides are finished with the rubbed on poly, but the faces are not.  We're actually painting this piece to match Kalia's closet, so you don't get the actual full reveal just yet!  I can't even wait to see how it turns out once it's all finished...anyone want to come over and paint it for me?!?!  I know it's a really pretty piece as just wood, but it just doesn't go in the nursery without being painted, and I'm excited about the visions I have in my head for this piece!

Now if I could just keep my belly out of my paint...hmmm.

Hope everyone's having a great week so far!  Happy Wednesday!

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