and so it begins...

Well, I'm here to give you a little in-progress shot of what's been going on in the nursery this week. This room has been our extra bedroom/catch-all room since we moved in last summer, and we are finally getting into transforming the space. The biggest change that needed to happen first was PAINT, of course! Any old Trading Spaces fans out there? The best part of the show was the reveal of what was in the paint cans, because it gave you a sense of direction for the entire room. I recreated this scene with little man, who was just as impressed as I thought he would be. Just a little Genevieve moment, no big deal.

Like the rest of our house, this room was painted in flat blah-beige paint. The room had an orange and blue stripe running around the room about six feet up. We liked the stripes, but I wanted to do them differently. Plus the wall color had to go. 
Please excuse the mess and iPhone quality photos.


I knew the room would probably be a lighter color so I needed to prime over the stripes to ensure complete coverage. There's not many options out there that are safe for pregnancy. Lo and behold, Kilz actually makes a NON-VOC primer (which the lady at Lowe's didn't even realize existed), so my little preggie heart was happy knowing I wouldn't have to direct this task to someone else and could just knock it out myself.

This stuff seriously did the trick. I was only surprised because I've never really used primer before. I went over the stripes twice, just to make sure they were totally blocked out.

After priming the stripes, I went ahead with my favorite angle brush and did all the edging in the color I decided on - Granite Dust by Valspar (also the same color as the playroom, kitchen, and dining room). Valspar Signature is the best. paint. ever. I will use nothing else. It's thick, got great coverage, and is also ZERO-VOC! Safe to use for all you preggies out there! At this point I was already beginning to see the difference the new color would make and fell in love. The grey offered a better contrast to all the trim and was softer on the eyes than the obnoxious yellowish-beige.

Then yesterday I rolled out all the grey! It makes such a huge difference already. I didn't realize just how much the stripes really "shortened" the room. I mean, our ceilings are 12 feet high, and after wiping out the harsh horizontal line they created, suddenly the room seemed twice the size. The new paint is also satin finish, so it bounces the natural light around the room beautifully, opening up the space tremendously from the previous flat paint. Seriously, who uses flat paint?!

You can see a little preview of some of the fabric I plan to use for curtains and some of the bedding in here, whether this nugget is a boy or a girl. For a boy, we will bring in orange with the navy, and for a girl we will be doing coral & orange with a little navy for some contrast and weight. So we really are bringing the previous colors back, just in better form. The wall left unpainted will be given a base coat of white, which will eventually become the focal wall in the room.

The room continues to really change with each new step! The next part of the project will be hopping up on top of the ladder to go around the top two feet of the room, then edging and painting the white wall. I'm so excited to share little bits and pieces of this project with you as it develops!