Nursery Projects

My parents came to visit a couple weeks ago which forced me to have a deadline for some nursery projects.

The biggest project was to refinish a dresser that we got off craigslist and plan to use as our changing station (as well as a dresser obviously). We were going to paint the base white and then put a dark stain on the top. First step - sand the whole thing all the way down. Thank goodness for electric sanders because this part by far took the longest.

Once it was all sanded down I could move to the staining and painting part. I started with the stain first, we chose a Dark Walnut color and finished it off with 3 thin coats of poly.

With the stain done, I could move on to painting. I ended up doing 3 coats of paint+primer to ensure that the wood grain and knots didn't bleed through. Once everything was dry, we could finally move it into the nursery and add the new hardware.

Quite the before and after!

Second project was refinishing a rocking chair that my parents gave us. It was one that they used when I was a baby. It was in desperate need of reupholstery and new padding. I planned to stain the wooden frame the same Dark Walnut. 

The last of the projects was hanging a closet organizing unit. The closet originally only had a hanging bar on either side of the closet, with nothing in the middle. Doesn't make for very efficient storage! Thanks to my dad and Chris, we not have a functional closet.

So with all these projects completed, we now have pretty much all the main furniture items in the nursery - which leaves just organizing and decorating - the fun stuff!

Spring Recap

It's been over a month since the last post and we've been staying busy - so here's a quick recap of what we've been up to.

We were gung-ho to have spring hit and have a yard to do yard work. It's our first spring in the house so we had no clue what was going to grow. We quickly found out that our yard grows mostly weeds - awesome. Only in the past few weeks have we noticed more grass growing. Well, at least the weeds are green! When my parents were here in March (yes, almost 3 months ago) my mom and I built out a small tiered retaining wall. We also had some really pretty azaleas going for most of the spring and the big tree at the front of our yard had gorgeous white blossoms, but unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it. Since this initial weekend of yard work, we haven't done much else. Occasionally weeding (though they seem to grow at an obscenely fast rate) but now that my stomach is much bigger, it makes it harder to do much gardening.

New stone wall

Spring blossoms

We've had a smattering of events in the past month or so - Chris' birthday, Colleen's wedding and a visit from my sister and Hank. In the coming month we have even more, something just about every weekend! This seems to be the norm for us once the spring/summer hits, even though we complain about it every year.

One thing is certain for this summer, we have a lot of work to do to prepare for the babe. The nursery is empty except for the crib and piles of stuff. For the past week I've been working on the dresser and rocking chair; hopefully both will be finished and in the room within the next week. The most recent 'big' project we've done to the house is paint and replace the carpet in the two spare rooms. We'd bought paint for the rooms back in November and we got the same carpet installed that we have in our bedroom. Now, the whole house has new floors - so happy to have the ugly green-brown carpet to be completely gone!

Before and after

Freshly installed carpet

Close up of carpet - looks great with the new paint

The only piece of furniture in the nursery

Sneak peek of the dresser

In other news, I've officially hit the third trimester! I have a feeling these last weeks are going to fly by!