Nursery - BEFORE

In-progress pictures of baby's nursery (from we first began the project started in February).  The paints are all from Lowe's.  You can't beat their sample prices -- under $4 for a 1/2 pint.  Therefore, no real pressure to commit right away.


This just an example pf the paint sample size, these were not our colors (we try to stay away from brown hues on the walls as much as possible)

I knew that I wanted to do horizontal stripes on the long walls of the room, and a solid dark color for the short walls.  Seth came up with the idea to use a navy blue for the short walls.  As for the stripes, that would take some testing. 

I had purchased these curtains from Restoration Hardware's Baby & Child line, as they were on clearance.  The curtains are a wonderful heavy duty 100% cotton canvas, complete with blackout liner.

The intention was to lean towards gender-neutral (especially since I had purchased these curtains before we knew baby's gender).  I tested some paint colors for the stripes to go with the "silver sage" color of the curtains:

This was done the first week of Feb. 2012

I mean, come on, what else are you going to do while 6 months pregnant and you're husband is away on a weeklong business trip to Phoenix?  Not to worry, I made sure to only paint for short periods of time.  For example, I only did one coat of one stripe color at a time, leaving the ceiling fan on & taking minimum of an hour break between each coat/color.


Note: The caulking and final paint had not been done yet on the woodwork.

You can see the previous paint color for this room -- it never would have worked for a nursery (unless you are giving birth to a 70 year old baby!  Reference to "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" which we just watched recently).

Btw, the wood trim was all done by Seth in late January -- we are so proud of him!  Before that, we had plain sheet rock walls from floor to ceiling.  Interesting to see what a combo of baseboard, crown, and beadboard can do for a room.  Details on that later.

The stripes to the left are Benjamin Moore colors.  While their paints are considerably thicker, I would not recommend using that brand for testing b/c the samples are miniscule and cost about twice as much as the Valspar from Lowe's.

After a few days of viewing the stripes in daylight and artificial lighting, and holding the curtains next to the striping, I realized we needed more a of a contrast to the silver sage of the curtains.  The curtains needed to stand out on their own, with maybe a few room accents to match (but certainly NOT the wall color).  Back to Lowe's, I went. 

Rather than sticking to the original plan for gender-neutral tones, I really went for it and picked some old-school baby boy blue shades:

Painting officially commenced the first week of March 2012

We loved the traidtional feel of the dark and light blues.  Especially how it looked next to the white wood trim.  As you can see from this picture, our entire house is themed in soothing, neutral grays -- so we really were going for a different "feel" when it came to the nursery.

The light blue does seem a tad bright here, but bear in mind this is still before the final step of the 2nd horizontal stripe (more of a gray-blue hue) was added.


The window, prior to being adorned with the Restoration Hardware Silver Sage curtains



The crown at the top really helped to elevate the height of the room, and the wood on the walls made everything feel much bigger.  The trim on the sidewalls also helped to elongate the wall height and lengthen the wall overall. It's quite a commitment, but we highly recommend it. 

Just for reference:  This is just a standard 8 foot high room.  I'm 5'3" and the trim on the long walls came to above my eye level.  Perfect for additional lateral surface area, too!