Isaac is the name that they are going with. It is a beautiful name. That they need to stick with now, for sure--because I am entitling my adventure in making over his nursery: Isaac's Crib.
Here is your first glimpse into Isaac's crib.
Thanks to Dad-To-Be Jeff, the room walls recently became that brisk Dunn Edwards - Below Zero paint color that you see.
The irony will not be lost on Isaac--that he will likely be born with outside temperatures over 100 degrees and come home to a room painted 'below zero.' He will think it is hysterical. I am sure of it.
Our first mission was to set up the accent wall. After talking about different murals and designs, we went with stripes. Jen liked stripes because it was something that he could grow into and wasn't something over the top annoyingly cute.
We pulled some colors out of the fabric that she chose for bedding and curtains and got busy researching stripes. Word on the internet is that vertical stripes add height to a room while horizontal stripes make the room seem more spacious. When we initially decided stripes, we both assumed vertical. After looking at a slew of examples, we decided that horizontal seemed more calming and pleasing to the eye. We also realized that walls with bountiful colors and tiny little stripes made our heads want to explode. Not the feeling Jen is going for in the nursery.
I put together a wide stripe pattern from the colors, pulled a similarly sized nursery picture off the internet and then made a rough mock up with Photoshop of how the striped wall would look.
Jen approved. Jen loved.
I had the placement and stripe width already calculated (Shown on the left in pink in the photo below). When we got started we marked off the wall starting our measurements from the ceiling. Our thought process was that since the floor and ceiling didn't seem to be even, that we would rather have the crookedness show on the bottom floor stripe rather than the ceiling stripe.
The black column shows at what point a marking needs to go on the wall when the top of the tape measure is butted up against the ceiling. I know it is obvious, but I'm going to say it anyway--to get your distance from the ceiling as seen in black you add the current stripe width to the combined width of the previous stripes.
For the most part, we followed the instructions from Young House Love. The only difference is that we made more measurements along the wall to make sure that the tape didn't sag in the middle. In the photo below, where there is a pink line, that is where we marked to help place the tape. There would be another pink line at the leftmost part of the wall that can't be seen in the photo.
We were pretty ecstatic when the tape went up because it confirmed our love for going horizontal.
The orange and green stripes were only 4.5 inches wide so we got away with using the $3 sample sized containers from Behr. We got quarts for the light blue and dark blue. Throw in a roll of painter's tape and it came to about $36.
We did green, orange and dark blue in the first session. We may have rolled over the tape in a few spots too. Oops.
Rather than put down tape onto the freshly painted green and orange strips in order to paint the light blue in between them, I just did the edging by hand. I figured that I would just want to touch it up anyway, so I might as well not waste time taping it.
Jen thought I was crazy when I told her how I was going to touch up all the edges to cover up the paint bleeding. It makes such a huge difference though.
Clean edge to my left, bleeding edge to my right and a snarly bird's nest in the middle.
Jen didn't know how fast I am.
Wicked fast.
We finished the entire wall in a day. Yes, that is including the time spent snacking, running to Ace for some mini roller covers and complaining about how this season of the Bachelor is terribly infuriating. Worse than vertical stripes.
Everyone was pleased. But, no one more than Jen. She was amped to finish the rest of the room. That very night. What's a couple more hours to get the crib put together, the closet organizer set up, and the baseboards installed?
I got out while I could.
I obviously can't keep up with my 5-months pregnant friend.
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