Vanity Area Update

Well, we finally got around to our first home improvement project since having Kalia.  She doesn't really sleep as much as normal babies do, so getting things done, besides feeding her every hour or so, is quite challenging!  Unfortunately, she came down with a cold last weekend.  While she was sleeping her cold away (she's better now!), Chris and I took advantage of the down time and repainted our vanity area.

We had repainted our bathroom back in January (post here), which left our vanity / closet area looking pretty bad.  The two colors clashed pretty badly, and we knew we wanted something a bit darker to make the area a little bit more cohesive, but went to work on the nursery instead.

Here's what the area looked like prior to our paint job on Sunday :

And here's what the area looks like now :

If you look carefully in the next few photos, you can see how this area ties in with our Master Bathroom paint color scheme.

The paint color is Mermaid Net by Behr.  We took the Tide Pools paint swatch that we used to paint the bathroom and went two shades darker so that the colors would flow well from one room to the next.

We both were a little iffy at first about the dark color, but it feels warm and soothing all at the same time, and definitely makes the bathroom a cohesive area instead of being so disjointed.

This is just one of a multitude of projects I've got planned to get our Master Bathroom up to par.  Every time I walk into Kalia's nursery, I'm jealous that she's got a nicer room than us!

So what do you guys think about our new vanity area?  Do you like the dark color, and how it compliments the light color of the master bathroom, or is it too dark for you?

Stay tuned to see what else I've got up my sleeve.  I'm ready for a nice, relaxing Master Bedroom instead of the hodge podge of a room we've got going on right now!

Hope everyone's doing well.  Thanks so much for all of the sweet compliments about Kalia's nursery...I so appreciate every one of them!!!

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Nursery Room Tour

I can't believe we started on the nursery room back in January, and just finished it up a few days prior to Kalia's due date (May 30th)!  We've come so far and done so much in there though...it's a room we both truly love and can't wait to watch Kalia grow up in now that she's finally here.

In designing the nursery, I wanted to create something that would grow with Kalia.  We put a lot of time, energy, and love into creating what exists right now, which I knew we would, so the thought of trying to change it up in a few years because it was too 'baby' wasn't something I was willing to do.  The second huge consideration was that Chris and I had to love the room too.  Not like it, but love it.  Let's be honest here...while Kalia's in the nursery phase, the two people that are going to spend the most time enjoying or hating the nursery room design are Chris and I.  Kalia will enjoy all of the patterns and shapes in the nursery, but the functionality and feel of the room is more for Chris and I right now than Kalia.

I came up with the general color scheme for Kalia's room when I came across this image on Benjamin Moore's website :

I loved everything about this color scheme, but decided because it was a baby's room, that I wanted the gray color to be a little bit lighter.  This color scheme uses these colors :

lucerne AF-530 storm AF-700 paper mache AF-25

Accent Colors royal flush 2076-20

I used BM's Moonshine as my gray color for the walls, and used my existing white paint I had for the trim and pieces we built.  When I picked up the paint from Benjamin Moore, I also grabbed their paint cards so that I could continually go back and compare the color blue and pink that I wanted for accent colors.  I had the paint swatch card in my wallet and pulled it out and compared it for anything and everything that I bought to go into the nursery.  It was such a great way to stay within my color palette 

I scoured and scoured the internet, and went into baby shop after baby shop looking for ideas.  The first go round, as much as I'm embarrassed to say it, I came home from Pottery Barn Kids crying.  I'm not a pastel pink kind of gal, and store after store, that's all I could find.  The internet was a much better source for me personally.  The one item that I completely 'borrowed' the idea of was Kalia's bookshelves.  All of the rest of the ideas I came up with pretty much on my own...I tried to design the nursery to be appropriate for a baby / toddler, but not scream "BABY!!!".

Lets go back to where we started with this room.  This room was a mess when we moved into it, so we kept it as our junk room while we worked on fixing up other rooms in our home.  Previously, I used it to do all of my building and painting projects.

We had to redo everything in this room to even get to a blank slate.  We cleaned out the junk room (see here), primed the walls, removed the old carpet, painted the ceiling, and installed a new window (see here), painted the walls and closet, and installed a new ceiling fan (see here), painted the trim (see here), installed bamboo floors (see here and here), all to wind up with a clean slate room to start putting stuff in.

And here's where the nursery stands today (and all of the details on cost, where I purchased an item, and links to each initial post) :

This is the entry way to Kalia's Room.  Both items on the hallway walls were gifts from Kalia's baby showers.

Next up, here's the crib wall.  Details from this picture are below.

Curtains : Ikea (post here).  Cost : Hava Curtain Rod : 39.99, white curtains, 19.99, pink curtains 24.99 on clearance.

Blinds : Home Depot (post here) Cost : $50.

Crib : (initial post here).  From Bratt Decor.  Cost: Crib and mattress (and a mobile not shown), bought off of someone for $400, white sheet from Target : gift, bedskirt from Pottery Barn Kids $53 (I wanted to make this, but ran out of time / energy!).  Next to the crib is an old planter bench that I threw fabric on top of ($3), and am using as a stand for our diaper champ (gift), and we actually have since put Kalia's clothes hamper up there too.

Monogram : Made by me, post here.  Cost : $5 for spray paint and pictures (already owned everything else).

Rug : (initial post here).  From Land of Nod, Cost : $289

Chair : Pottery Barn Comfort Swivel Glider and Pottery Barn white twill with stone piping slipcover.  Cost:  free - gift for my birthday.  (It's amazingly comfortable).  Pillow : Marshall's $15.

Side table / ottoman - Calypso by Target.  Cost : $50 (used completion discount plus 5% credit card discount).

Here's a close-up of the closet (details below) :

Closet System : Made by us (initial design post here, toy box post here, no sew bench cushion tutorial post here, entire closet system reveal post here, closet filled with clothes organization shown here).  Cost : Wood : $50, adjustable hanging racks : Home Depot $20 , Mirror : Home Depot $30 , letters for name : Jo-Anns $10, hinges for toybox : Home Depot $17 (for all 4 hinges).  Baskets : Lowes (already owned).

Next up, the bookshelves :

And from another angle (that's a little bit brighter) :

Here's what it looks like with the rest of the room (as much as was possible to capture) :



Bookshelves : Made by us (initial post here, follow up post here).  Idea from Elizabeth Sullivan Designs (see here) seen initially at House of Turquoise (see here).  Cost : $40 for wood.  Already had paint and screws.

From there, we'll move onto the daybed wall :

Pillows on Daybed : Made by me (post here).  Elephant pillow - made from a tea towel from Anthropologie.  Cost : $18.  All other pillows I had the materials for.  I've had the big green pillows for quite some time now, but they're from Stein Mart.

Daybed : Made by me last year. (making the daybed post here, moving to the nursery post here).  Cost:  Already owned, free.

Alphabet Wall : (initial post here) Flashcards from Etsy (here).  Frames : Dollar Store.  Cost : Flashcards $64 (with shipping).  Frames : $26.

If you keep turning, you'll see Kalia's dresser :

Another shot of the dresser with the crib :

Dresser : Made by us (build post here, finishing post here).  Cost : Wood plus drawer glides: $150, already had everything else for building and painting,  handles : Pottery Barn $6 (used discount code and $25 off $50 coupon),  lamp : Kirkland $25, changing pad : Target $20, changing pad cover : Pottery Barn $19.

Gallery Wall above Dresser : Full post here,  Consists of hand-me-down Mirror refinished (post here) and diy wall art (post here).  Cost : Mirror, free, wall art : $10 (diy frames, fabric, and clothes pins).

And, of course, the best part of the nursery is this little girl right here :

She made all of the hard work worth while.  I took that picture a week ago for her 3 week birthday.  I love her so much!!

Whew...that post has been awhile in the making (and took awhile to type up).  If you have any additional questions that I didn't cover, please check the initial posts out, and then if I still haven't answered them there, feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to get to answering it in a somewhat timely manner!

Hope you guys enjoyed the full nursery post!  That room really has turned out to be our favorite in the house thus far.  It took a lot of hard work, but it's something we both truly love and are proud of.  What do you think of it?  Anything you would've done differently?

Hope everyone's having a great week!

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Happy 4th of July!!!

From the cutest girl in the entire world...

I might be a little biased :-).

How 'bout from our family to yours...

Kodi had a tennis ball in the pool that he was a little more interested in.  He normally doesn't miss a good photo op!

Hope everyone's enjoying their day!

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