Showing posts with label toy box. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toy box. Show all posts

Monday, July 29, 2013

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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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Nursery Room - Toy Box (and NAME REVEAL!!)

I left you on Friday with a picture and lots of verbiage on what we came up with for our Nursery Room Closet design.  Lucky you, this week is... CLOSET WEEK!!!  Well, hopefully it is anyways!  Assuming no more all day doctors appointments / blood work / exhausting migraine headaches, hopefully by Friday I'll be able to show you the full closet design.  I'm breaking it up because it was a.lot of work, so it at least deserves a few posts!

The first thing that we had to get built was the toy box.  Because we wanted to slide that all the way into the side of the closet, it needed to go in first.  We want it to be removable so that we can utilize that space for more clothes as she grows, and in case we ever leave this house.  It's a customized toy box after all!

We built the box using 3/4" plywood.  Here's Chris doing a dry-run of how all of these pieces are going to fit together :


It literally is just heavy plywood glued and nail gunned together.  While I was working on the finishing coats of the bookshelves, Chris primed and painted both sides of the soon to be closet system.  We nailed the box together...


Then I caulked the corners and edges, sanded, and gave her another fresh coat of white paint. You can see below how the caulk makes the seams disappear (compare with the obvious seams above).  The difference between building something you're okay with and something you're really proud of is in the details.  Taking the time to caulk and sand this until everything was flush really made a huge difference.

Goodbye seams!
We added some hinges on the back to make the lid functional.

We wanted the top to have a bit of a lip so that we didn't have to install a handle.


My super smart hubby came up with the idea of installing universal hinges on the inside of the box.  That way, once the lid is open, you have to press it to actually close it.



It stays open all on its own.  No worries about smashing fingers or any other little body parts!  We also put in little felt pads to keep the underneath of the lid from rubbing against the top of the actual toy box.


Now, the reason this toy box wasn't done last weekend was because our daughter was still nameless.  And we wanted to get the rest of the closet system installed, so I told Chris that once we named her, I could put it on the toy box already installed.

So last weekend, I built her frame.  I used the same technique I used for building a picture frame, and just adjusted my measurements to be what I wanted.  (Click on the link for the how-to!)


I sanded this down and painted it the same blue as the closet, but mixed it with white to lighten it up a bit.  I almost wish I would've left it the dark blue, but I still really like the end result.

I played around with painting her name.  I used a combo of the blue, some dry-brushed gray (from the walls), added some glaze, and put a couple of coats of white on the top.  I just kept messing with the paint job until I was satisfied with the end result.  Here's an 'in progress' picture.


Attaching the frame and her name to the toy box was a bit tricky...for a few reasons.  As I mentioned before, the toy box is removable.  Which means I wanted her name and the frame to be centered on the box.  The box, however, is not 100% visible from when you walk in.  It's tucked into the nook of the closet.


And I didn't want her name to disappear into that nook.  Secondly, since the rest of the closet system was installed prior to us adding her name to the toy box, we didn't want to un-install everything to just put her name on the face of the box.  To attach her name and the frame, we applied glue to the frame and the letters, and nailed them in from inside of the toy box one by one.  There was a lot of measuring and remeasuring and praying going on during this, but we're both really happy with the end result!  So what did we name her?!


Kalia (pronounced Ka-lee-ah).  We went through a million different things before we came up with this name.    I could write another 3000 word essay on our process, but I'll spare you the details!  We're just so happy our baby girl finally has a name that we both love!  

If you look closely above, you can see that we did have one causality when we installed the picture frame portion.  I forgot to put glue on the back of it before Chris nailed it in, and then once I got her name in, I hadn't centered it right.  So, we took it off and glued it on and nailed it back in place properly.  A little touch up work with some caulk and paint, and that little mistake will be long forgotten!

Here's the whole thing put together:


A lot of hard work for a box to throw toys in, but we're both really happy with the end result.  We love that it's customized to our style, it's personalized, and very functional all at the same time.  That's just part 1.  That was exhausting, huh?!  Stay tuned this week to see the entire closet reveal!!  

Hope everyone is having a great Tuesday!



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