Brayden's Nursery...Oh My!

Let me preface this by saying, "My poor second child!"  There is no way I'm going to be this detail oriented with kid number two.  I hope they don't feel slighted!  And to add to it, Nick & I talked about how the nicest room in the house is the nursery.  To be fair, this is the first room I've ever designed from beginning to end with mostly new items.  The rest of the house is modge podge of items we've collected over the years.  Aside from the chest of drawers and night stand, we had none of these items starting out.

I started designing little Brayden's nursery before we even knew he was a boy.  Of course, I was also designing a little girl's nursery too.  I wanted to be excited for either outcome.  :)

Since my husband is such an outdoor person, I kept throwing around ideas for a theme.  I came up with "fishing", "camping", and "construction".  All three were very boyish, and I asked Nick to be the final one to choose.  I gave him three different bundles of fabric choices, and told him to pick his favorite for the baby bedding.  My Sister is amazing and made all of our bedding for us.  Isn't she awesome and oh so talented?!  He chose just an outdoor theme overall!  And I was very excited he did.  I feel this theme could grow with Brayden a bit.

Once the theme was chosen, I had to pick out a wall color.  Not easy for me because I knew it needed to be somewhat neutral.  If you've ever been to my house, you'll quickly notice that I LOVE color.  Every room is different (we have chocolate brown, sage, blue, gray, purple, and deep green).  But, I ended up picking a nice neutral to go along with all of the fabric choices.  The color is called "Ponytail" by Olympic.  We had some friends that had a baby about three months ago and they had painted his nursery this color.  I really liked the way it looked and knew it would go well with the fabrics and decorations.  We had Eddie Mason, a local painter, come in to paint the nursery, and he scraped the popcorn, textured, and painted the ceilings in the nursery, guest bathroom, and hallway.  Nick & I were happy we didn't have any painting to do.

I wanted to use fishing poles, lanterns, and wood as part of my decor.  I also wanted to use some furniture we already had.  We had a chest of drawers and a night stand given to us by one of my mother-in-love's coworkes a while back.  I originally wanted to paint them a vibrant red to give a punch of color to the room, but after painting a dresser for our bedroom, I decided they were perfect as is.  Plus, we're not ready to replace all of the flooring in the house yet, and we have this interesting burgundy colored carpet that would clash terribly with red furniture.  Alan & Tovah gave us their old buffet to use as a dresser that I also left as is.  I ended up really liking the way all of the furniture worked together.

I wanted to show Nick what all was in my head before we embarked on creating Bray's nursery.  I have some pretty mad PhotoShop skills (if I do say so myself), so I created as close to what was in my head into concept drawings below.  Sigh, I would have loved to do interior design.  If you're new to my blog, you can click on the image, and it will enlarge.

 Breakdown of all the details...

 Closet wall..

• We already had this chest of drawers.
• Mom made this photo album for Brayden.  I've put all of Bray's sonogram pictures in it and can't wait to fill it with all of the pictures we'll take.
• I had the wicker basket lying in the garage.  This will be a catch all for toys, pacifiers, burp rags, etc.  Sister actually gave us this basket filled with some goodies on our wedding day.
• Nick picked out the lures hanging on the wall at Hobby Lobby.

Crib wall...

• We were blessed with Brayden's crib at our New Boston shower thanks to our hostesses.  I found it at Target but it was cheaper on Amazon.
• I already had the fabric choices chosen for the crib bedding, and Sister made it all for us.  She's so talented!  Check out her Etsy page, Hoot & Annie's, or her facebook page.
• My Sister's friend, Sarah Propps, made the awesome mobile.  Check out her Etsy page, SJPiccadilly.
• I made the collage out of different items found all over the place.

• I got the Sleepless in Pittsburg photo announcement printed on metal at Picture It On Canvas.  I was able to get a good deal on it because of a Groupon.
• The antlers are from Nick's maternal grandfather.  I repainted the base to liven it up a bit though.
• We bought the "Fisherman's Ruler", "Gone Fishin'", and Rapala sign at Hobby Lobby.

Door wall...

• The dresser was actually Tovah & Alan's old buffet.  They asked if we wanted it after getting Memaw's buffet.  After we checked to make sure a changing pad would fit, we said absolutely!  It's great for storage with all of the drawers.  The two end doors will have baskets in them to hold stuffed animals and bigger toys.
• Mom and Sister ended up finding the awesome "Ford" wooden crate at Hobby Lobby for diapers, wipes, etc.
• Melanie had this lamp at her house.  Their dog, Buddy, had broken the antler off of the moose, but I asked her if I could try and fix it.  She said yes, and I took it home.  A little glue and the moose's antler has been reattached.  I found the burlap shade at Wal-Mart.  I knew it would work perfectly in the nursery.
• Nick made the white floating shelf.  Go husband!  We've filled it with all of the stuffed animals Brayden's received thus far.  The blocks were actually given to Melanie when she was pregnant with Nick.  It's really cool to me that those were decoration in Nick's nursery and will now be in Bray's nursery.

Window wall...

• I wanted this part of the room to be perfect.  I wanted a wood wall.  I had found many options from wood flooring, to wallpaper that looked like wood, to pallet wood.  Nick was very adamant about not wanting wallpaper, so we decided to go with pallet wood since Nick has an abundance of it.  Then we scraped that idea.  When we Nick started tearing down pallets, and we were talking about everything we again Nick would need to do to them before they were safe to bring inside: sand, clean, inspect for bugs, hang on the wall, then seal with polyurethane, we decided to forego the pallet wood.  Nick said, "Forget this.  Let's go get flooring."  :)  It turned out perfectly!  We got this kind of laminate wood flooring at Home Depot.  We had approximately 75 square feet to cover.  We got 4 cases and used all but 3 boards (that were actually damaged in shipping).  He marked the studs with the stud finder he just had to have :), and popped a few nails into each board.  The boards were the kind that snapped together, so once the nails were in, they aren't going any where any time soon.  He cut out the holes for the outlets, and he also painstakingly made the cuts around the window trim that is covered by the curtains.  I told him, "The curtains will cover that.  It'll be ok if it's not perfect."  He said, "NO!  I'll know if it doesn't look good."  My husband, the perfectionist.  This was Nick's pet project, and he did a phenomenal job!
• Dad found the awesome red wagon at a friend's house in NB (thanks McCarters!).  Nick made it into a bookshelf for me.  I found the idea on The Stanley Clan's blog.  I had originally planned to hang this on the closet wall, but we decided to move it to be more of a focal point.  We filled it with all of the awesome books we've received plus a few more knick knacks we've gotten.
• We already had this glider and ottoman that Nick's Mamaw had given us, I just had to recover/refinish it. I got this fabric.
• We already had this night stand.
• We found this awesome lamp in the clearance section at Hobby Lobby one day.  I love it!
• I found the floor to ceiling curtains here.
• We bought the bamboo window shades at Lowe's.
• The picture frames are from Hobby Lobby.  The top picture is Nick's maternal grandfather and the bottom picture is my maternal grandfather.