Floral Flamingo Nursery. One Room Challenge: Week 7

Week 7! Do you know what that means? It’s reveal daaaaaaaay!

That’s right, the end is here and I just know you’re all on the edge of your seats waiting for the answer to that one burning question: “Did they do it?”

Yes.

We.

Did.

How cute is that flamingo on the door? Our sweet neighbor got that for us and we love it. Thanks again, Jan!

This is probably my longest post in a long time or maybe even ever but this is also my favorite room/project that we’ve done so sorry not sorry.

We were really down to the wire on this one and finished up last night way past my bedtime. Don’t worry, my bedtime is 9 so it’s not like we were burning the midnight oil but we were working later than I had planned on. And when I say “we” were working on it I mostly mean Kyle. It was worth it though because now the nursery is pretty much done and I’m fully planning on changing into my pajamas as soon as I get home tonight and devoting all of my time and attention to the couch and the tv. Ditto for this weekend.

Anywho.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane all the way back to the year 2013 when we moved in to this weirdly built, poorly “updated” home that we love so much. This room immediately became one of the designated junk rooms and it stayed that way for the next couple of years:

And then we cleaned it up, slapped on some of my favorite paint (Benjamin Moore Hale Navy), and called it a craft room. It eventually became a guest room but I failed at documenting that cycle of its life.

Fast forward to just before this round of the ORC started when we were getting ready to overhaul the room to make way for our new addition and I thought, “Oh, the ORC starts next week? What perfect timing! It’s fate! Let’s participate!” I was young. I was naive. I forgot about all of the nights and weekends we weren’t going to be around to tackle a project in six (later became seven) weeks.

We had a little bit of a head start because we had just ripped out the carpet and baseboards but we still had quite a long list to accomplish. Six weeks really isn’t a long time in the DIY home improvement world and especially for people who typically drag out a project for several months or years (spoiler alert: I’m talking about us) but we somehow managed to pull it off.

The biggest projects were the floors, baseboards, door and window casings, and swapping out the old fan for a new one with a light kit. These things made it an entirely new room and everything else was really just a bonus.

Not a true before but the best I have:

 

The dresser turned out pretty much exactly like we wanted (we’re still on the hunt for drawer pulls) and I love those flamingo prints. The seller actually sent us 3 prints on canvas on top of the 3 poster prints which we want to hang but we nixed our idea of building custom frames and decided to wait until we can get the canvases stretched properly so we trimmed down the poster prints and used IKEA frames.

I still need to figure out how to organize all of the drawers but check out these liners. All of the heart eye emojis for these guys:

I’m actually still waiting on the rest of the paper I need to finish lining the drawers so between that and the missing hardware, the dresser is about 98% finished but luckily we should still have about 8 weeks before we expect this little girl and the paper should be here tonight.

I’m pretty much obsessed with this ultrasound print (yes, it is actually one of our ultrasounds). I’ll have a full source list at the bottom of the post but this is from an Etsy shop called babyblueprint. They were so wonderful to work with and I think it’s a really neat alternative to framing a traditional u/s photo. Big thanks to Chris Loves Julia which is where I heard about them to begin with and also where I got the source for the block frame I used.

And in case you’re wondering,  I had a basket of diapers and wipes on the dresser but decided to start out with them in the top dresser drawer just to keep the top of the dresser cleaned off a little. I’m sure I’ll probably end up changing my mind when I have to actually change a diaper at 2am but that will be an easy fix.

The nursing corner might be my favorite spot in the room. My mom saw that flamingo pillow on HGTV so she tracked it down and sent it to us and I think it’s adorable!

We debated putting the glider by the crib or the crib on this side of the room but I really like where we ended up. Now I have a big window I can look out of during the hours I’ll surely spend in the chair while keeping the crib on the darker side of the room.

I’m really glad I ended up with this pouf instead of the pink footstool I debated getting. This corner has a lot of pink and I think the natural tone and texture of the pouf really helps to break it up. It’s firm enough that I can use it as a little side table and light enough to where I can easily move it over if I want to prop my feet up without using the recliner function.

And that rug! You guys, it’s machine washable. Did you hear me? MACHINE WASHABLE. You just throw the whole thing in the washer and bada boom, clean rug! I hesitated to buy it but I’m really glad I did. I think the color is perfect and I love the sweetness of the alphabet around the edge and I don’t even care that it cost me almost half of my decorating budget for the entire room.

This is what the other side of the room looked like before. So pretty:

And here it is now:

We built the book ledges and right now they’re loaded down because I have a hard time choosing. Most of the books on here are for older kids so we’ll probably switch them out for all of the board books and younger books we plan on stocking up on with our registry completion discount.

If that sign above the books looks familiar, it’s because it lived a previous life as the Taco Bar sign we made for the baby shower I hosted for my work wife. The gold letters are peel and stick so I just peeled off the old letters and used new ones to make a name sign. I debated hand painting letters but LOL no.

Fun fact: The bear in the basket was mine when I was a little girl.

I debated adding shelves to the left of the crib but I really didn’t want to weigh down this corner of the room too much and I didn’t feel like we needed more shelving so I framed some Rifle Paper Co. cards instead to bring in some floral for the “floral flamingo” theme we have going on.

The crib is one of my favorite pieces in the room and I get a kick out of the flamingo bust hanging above. Kyle had to kind of talk me into that purchase but I’m glad he did because I love how it looks in the room!

We installed these shelves last night and there was a while where I didn’t think they were actually going to go up. We had to re-position them to hit studs because the dry wall anchors we had didn’t really work with the screws we had and it was just basically one more battle that had to be fought before we could call it a night. The shelves used to live in the closet but we took them out to make room for hanging storage.

Kyle bought me those books for Christmas one year (or my birthday? Hmmm, I can’t actually remember) and I loved that Rifle Paper Co paper I used in the drawers so much that I decided I wanted to be able to see it in the room, too so I just tossed a scrap piece in a frame we had lying around. We picked up that little pineapple in Haiti last year and the owl is a white noise machine we got from one of Kyle’s co-workers. The baskets are there as a catch all but right now one is empty. The other holds teethers and pacifiers and I’m sure that will all evolve as we figure out how we need the room to work once we have an actual baby to take care of.

Rounding out the room we have the closet.

I’d love to upgrade to a custom closet system eventually but for now we just took out the shelves and hung a rod and moved our cedar chest in for extra storage. The cedar chest has been mine since I was little and it fits perfectly in the closet in here.

We picked up this print to hang between the door and the closet. We saw it in Hobby Lobby and although we don’t buy a ton of HL artwork, we liked the message and it matched the room so one 40% off coupon later it was ours.

One more time for you guys in the back:

 

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

I do still need a rug for the crib side of the room but I’m being cheap and holding out to see if there are any good Black Friday deals so for now we’ll just look at the pretty new floors.

That’s a wrap on the Fall 2017 ORC! Check out all of the other guest designer reveals right here.

Source list:

Diaper Pail/Changing Pad/Changing Pad Cover/Lamp/Ultrasound Print/Acrylic Block Frame/Flamingo Prints/Glider/Flamingo Pillow/Pouf/Rug/Drawer Liners/Floral Prints/Crib/Crib Sheet/Floral Baby Blanket/Flamingo Bust/Stuffed Flamingo/Floors/Closet Doors/Ceiling Fan