Le Floorplan

As I mentioned yesterday, we're finally getting our (bigger every day) behinds in gear to make progress on the nursery so that we're prepared when the peanut joins us.

To help get myself organized and know what needs to be done/bought/moved, etc, I went to my part-time bff Paint and did up a little floorplan:

We've got, or have ordered most of the big pieces seen here, so it's just a matter of getting it all and setting it all up, and then decorating, which I have several ideas for. Hopefully it starts coming together in the next week or so so I can get to the decorating part-that's always the most fun :)

Nursery Progress

We're finally making head way on the nursery. I should hope so with an estimated 36 days left until our family becomes 3. Um...36 days? Yep-I just triple checked...gulp!

My sisters threw me a fantastical surprise shower a couple weekends ago, and the once empty nursery quickly filled with baby paraphenalia.


And I loooove our new dresser. Hubs and I both kind of want to steal it for our own room. But, no-it was bought for the nursery, so there it'll stay...for now :) It fits loads of the little sleepers, onesies and what not that we got prior to and at the shower (I say we, but hubs was gratefully relieved of shower attendance duty).

We'd also finished up painting a couple weeks ago, and it's all been touched up and prettified.

Next up was/is filling the space with baby furniture and decorating it a bit so it's nice, fun and cozy. So I purchased the following decals from Etsy after way too much deliberation:
Source - in brown

Source - in white

And I've had a hard time finding a rocker/glider that I liked. There are the typical ones, which are nice enough, but I wanted something a little more streamlined and a little less busy looking (with all those gliding parts and hinges it was a bit busy for me) and I finally came across this little beauty:
Which is hand made in Ontario! Bonus! It's made by Off Your Rocker and I've heard some great reviews on WB.

Crib progress is at a bit of a standstill though unfortunately. I've painted and verathaned it a few times, but at our pre-natal class, a little issue of air circulation was brought up, so I called Health Canada and they don't really condone cribs with solid sides and no slats or anything in them for air circulation because of the risk of SIDS (aka every parent and parent-to-be's nightmare acronym). So now we've got to discuss with my dad and decide whether to modify the heirloom crib or go buy a new one entirely.

I've also bought drapes, a rug, a closet organizer, some cute accessories and our lighting fixtures are finally in! So there's a good amount of manual labour coming our way to get these things installed, but I know they're really going to get it looking a lot more like an actual room rather than a storage closet.

After a couple little stumbles on account of not being able to see my feet, we've finally got some progress on our banisters! Yay!

We loooved the banisters at our last house, so we wanted to somewhat replicate them in this house. (Seems like we're attempting to clone it, non?). So we got a few quotes, priced it out at good old HD and eventually, hubs admitted he really wanted to do it himself, and HD had the best prices for materials. So there we went.

For the record, I acknowledge that I don't have enough faith in hubs, which I should. I really thought this could turn out to be a mess. But, alas-he has proved himself and proved me wrong again. He's done a fantastic job.

A reminder of what we were looking at on moving day:

And after the stairs and hardwood were done:
Which already was a huge aesthetic improvement, but from the lookout point, it was a bit of vertigo that needed to be remedied.

So we got some oak newels:
And stained them using a store bought stain that we couldn't have paid to have custom made to match the hardwood any better:
So now it's just a matter of figuring out how to macgyver the wrought iron posts in since they don't come in the length we need them.

So from this:
To this:

I'm pretty pleased.

Nursery Fabric has arrived! (Mostly)

After a discouraging trip to a few local fabric stores, I decided to hit up J Caroline Creative to get some fabrics-knowing that they had lots I've been interested in before, and certainly more variety.

And did I EVER find some I liked. In the end I had a list of 15 that I was deciding between and settled on these ones after a consult with hubs :

So the first 2 are the main-ish fabrics in the room (although the 1st one is backordered) and the last 2 I just couldn't resist. Got them to make a couple pillows or blankets or something with.

So cute though, non? Now I need to decide what on earth I need 11 yards of fabric for when I'm an amateur seamstress at best!

One thing at a time-Kitchen Windows edition

Hubs and I have made no secret of the laundry list of things we'd like to do in our new place (or the fact that we're actually pretty stoked to do it all).

We've (ahem, he's) already been working quite hard and gotten a lot done, but there's still A LOT to do. So, we're trucking away at the list piece by piece.

Next up was the kitchen window coverings. Prompted by the neighbouring homeowner at their kitchen at the same time as I was and a glance out the window at each other, I decided to bump this up on the list.

A reminder of where we started:
Which, honestly, was vastly improved simply by taking them down and having nothing on those windows. But that was just a transition until the next day when we installed wooden slat blinds in the place of the doileys:

Despite the colour of the walls AND the kitchen door, it's already a huge improvement and a very welcome change into the 21st century. Scratch that-half of the 20th century wouldn't even have used the doiley curtains. Regardless, an improvement.

Although the improvement is making the rest of the kitchen look bad, I have to keep reminding myself---baby steps! Can't do everything at once.

DIY Nursery Art

I've mentioned once before about alphabet & animal posters that I really liked for the nursery. Unfortunately the ones I've found on Etsy weren't available in poster format, which I wanted.

What's a girl to do but make 'em herself then!

A few stock photography and a very basic knowledge of Photoshop, and here we are:
Cute, non? So now I've started barely accumulating stuff for the nursery and actually starting painting yesterday so I guess I've started 'nesting'.

Flooring Done-ito!

Ladies and gentlemen (haha-as if there are plural people reading this), our flooring is finally done!

Hubs spend his 2 week vacation working harder than he does regularly (which is incredibly hard and labour-intensive to begin with), but he's done and we're finally ready to MOVE IN!!!

A reminder (once again) of what was there December 11th, when we physically moved in:

So basically, in a word-blue. In 2 words-blue and ugly. (ok, ok, blue and outdated, I'll be nice)

Here's some progress and carnage pics for good measure:

And...the end result (with some insane mess and feline tour guides:

Up next: banisters and painting! I guess hubs' 'vacation' sn't over for a while yet ;P

The crib project

So I can officially say that the nursery progress has progressed. Incredibly slowly and nothing big, mind you, but you gotta start somewhere.

One of the big projects for the room is the crib. We are actually going to be using the very crib that my Oma (dutch grandmother) brought over by boat from Holland 50+ years ago, used for her 7 children and was then used for myself and my 3 siblings. Neat, huh?

It's a sturdy piece of furniture, that's for sure. So before anyone starts wondering if it's safe and in accordance with all the new standards, here's a photo:

It's solid oak and very sturdy, so I'm confident my little peanut will be in good hands.

However, hubs and I aren't real 'oak-y' people. Love the wood-not necessarily the colour. So...we've discussed with my father, who'd discussed it with my Oma before she passed away in November, and both were completely ok with us sanding it down and refinishing it in a darker stain.

So I got to work sanding it. Wore the motor out of 1 palm sander actually before buying a new, better one and making much quicker progress with it. Once it was all sanded, I tried a section with the stain..and it just wasn't working. Like, at all. It's some very old wood and I was using a water-based stain (better for the babe), and the two are just not a match made in heaven, unfortunately for me.

My dad then suggested just painting it. Obviously I'd thought of that, but didn't want to make the call to paint over a family heirloom piece from a family (and paternal grandfather) who LOVE their wood. But he said he'd ask his sisters and a painter-friend to see if they had a problem with it/ had an alternate solution for it. There wasn't and they didn't, so we bought the paint yesterday.

The CIL website is under construction, so I couldn't find an actual swatch of the colour, but it's Stonebridge Brown and (on my monitor, at least) closely resembles this:
So it'll hopefully be a much updated crib and it starts tonight with priming, so I'm very excited.