Happy Wednesday morning! I just finished grading my last online discussion posts of the year—whoohoo! Final exams…well, those will have to wait until next week. The end is in sight, ladies and gents! Although I’m not sure if any gents actually read this blog…maybe my dad? Little bro? If so, welcome!
Blogging has clearly been at the bottom of my list lately, but I thought I should update y’all on the nursery. It’s done enough that if a baby came tonight—gulp—we would be okay. In all honesty, we would have been fine if the nursery was mismatched and chaotic, so maybe I should say that I would be okay. Haha. Perhaps it’s more about the mom feeling prepared…
We definitely made our biggest strides when my mom and aunt came out, as they painted walls and furniture, bedazzled curtains, and decked out the room with frames for art. My mom was a whiz at painting the room! I’m pretty sure she did it all within about four hours, and that included two coats of paint, plus painting the inside of the closet. But this post is about furniture, so let me get back to the point. Our nursery consists of used furniture, which we were extremely happy to receive, in addition to making a few Craigslist purchases. Buying a new set just wasn’t in the budget for us, and when it comes down to it, I thoroughly enjoy the process of making used pieces feel cohesive and new. Plus, I love it when a room evolves over time. Take a peek into our progress…
Remember how I bought this rocker off of Craigslist awhile back? (I was air-drying the cushions after washing them…)
As it turns out, the cover was much harder to…cover…than I originally thought it would be. My kind neighbor was willing to help tackle the project, but in the end I decided that it wasn’t worth the headache, nor the extra cost of upholstery fabric. Thankfully, I was able to resell the rocker for the same price I paid for it, and then a few days later I bought another rocker for $30 off Craigslist. This time, the rocker was pretty much everything I wanted. The owners took extra good care of it, and they even had it recovered recently in a fabric that I was happy with. To top it off, they were super nice people and we spent about 30 minutes chatting before I actually paid them for the rocker. It felt right.
All I did was prime and paint the rocker white (actually, my aunt did it for me—thanks, AJ!). Tadaa!
The other piece of furniture that needed some TLC was a table given to us by some good friends. Apparently they swiped the table off of www.freecycle.org when they first got married, so I didn’t feel bad taking it off their hands for nothing.
My original idea was to paint the table white in order to match the rocker and changing table dresser, but it looked pretty washed out. Mom suggested painting the top a darker color, so we just wrapped a garbage bag around the white base, gave the top a few coats of oil-rubbed bronze spray paint, by Rustoleum, and then a few coats of polyurethane to keep it from getting scratched and beat up. I love the final result!
The dark top really helps to ground the table and ties it in nicely with the other dark brown accents in the room. It makes me want to find more free tables…they have so much potential! Actually, some friends called us the other night to tell us about a free desk that was on the side of the road. I sooo wanted to pick it up and give it a second life, but I said no. It’s getting harder to maneuver myself into the positions needed to paint, I probably shouldn’t paint right now, and with a baby coming soon, I need to allow myself a little time to relax. I hope someone else decided to redeem that desk!
In other baby related news, my sweet 7th grade students and their parents threw us a surprise baby shower at school yesterday! They went all out on food, décor, thoughtful notes of encouragement, and gifts galore! It was a blast, and we were so blessed by their efforts. They even gave us a huge lawn sign that we can apparently stick in our yard when the baby comes. It has a place to write the name, weight, etc. I guess it’s an easy way to let the neighbors in on the action!
