My Nursery

My nursery is nearly finished, after three long months of using it as some sort of storage locker for tools, home improvement supplies including but not limited to paint, spackle, plaster, wood and glue, as well as a place to throw all the baby stuff that we've acquired but don't yet have a home for. My mom was here for a week and helped us out a lot by painting. I ought to have taken a "before" picture and am kind of beating myself up over it now, because it's changed so much. First of all, we started off with Barbie pink and Clemson orange on two of the walls (these colors haunt me.. they were also in our old bathroom). Mom was a real trooper and painted them white. She did such a great job that there isn't even so much as a hint of a girly color on my little boy's bedroom walls, and that's awesome.

I had a really cool DIY project in mind for the nursery including PVC wall paneling in bright green. I wanted to panel about a meter high on the walls and then put a border. I thought it would be so cool -- plastic paneling that is washable, a bright, fun color -- perfect nursery material. Alas, the product, which is made by Grosfillex (lambris PVC -- i'm guilty.. I spend all day up to my ears in DIY at work..) is painfully expensive. When priced out, it would have cost us at least 80€, and that's assuming we didn't make any mistakes with cutting or gluing. Compared to the price of a bucket of paint (10-30€) I just couldn't justify it. Then, I abandoned the "bright green on my child's walls" idea all together. I figure in a room that is hardly 8m2, less must certainly be more. That, and someday, some poor person will have to paint over the green that I think is so amazing but they will surely hate, so i'd rather just keep things simple for the time being.

It was with that in mind today that I headed off to a wall paper specialist to buy a border. Since i've been attracted to all things jungle animals, there was one that immediately popped out at me and it must have been a sign -- it was orange and green -- the two colors i'd originally hoped to capture for this kid's room. With elephants, lions, and zebras, it was the perfect fit so I snatched it up. Much to my pleasure, the lady recommended a tube of glue that's literally paste -- just like in school.. no need for brushes, rollers, no mess.. just a tube of glue that squeezes onto the wall paper. I brought my spoils home, and feeling motivated, set to work.

For the last two months or so I haven't had any energy at all. I don't know where it came from today, but suddenly I found myself able to lift and move things around, and I ended up re-organizing all of the baby stuff in the guest room temporarily and fitting the construction stuff in a cubby area under the stairs. Amazing how i'd been trying to figure out how to make Jeremie make that happen for the last month, and all it took was walking up the stairs and simply doing it myself. Then, I set to work. Since it was a small room, the border went on fast and easy. I decided to start hanging pictures. That was a little bit more difficult because i'm not patient enough to measure anything (and yet somehow the wall paper turned out fine..) so I put a lot of extra little holes in the wall on accident. Oops. At least it's my wall, and not a wall that i'm renting!

I'm not ready to post pictures yet because there's a few more things that need to go into place, but for the moment i'm pleased with the progress. It's just a matter of time until he decides to show up (i'm not due till December but i've been having contractions all week) and I can't wait to be able to bring him home to his cozy new room, lay him in his cozy bed, and start our life together as a family of three.