five2eight

baby room: part 2

By Katie | Published Wednesday, April 24, 2013

now that you've seen some of the larger items that we purchased for the baby room, i thought i'd share some of the other things we have planned.
the baby's room has one large window. we previously had plain white curtains on the window, and while i liked the contrast with the dark blue walls, i thought that maybe we should do something a little more "fun" for the baby. so i found this ikat dot fabric below, and my mom made some curtains. i really wanted to install a light filtering roller blind behind the curtains, but sadly ikea has stopped making the enje blind in the size that i needed. i ended up purchasing a black out shade instead (why does ikea still make the black out shade in larger sizes??) it's not very pretty, but it's functional and i've been told that i'll want something that fully blocks light in the baby's room. anything that helps with sleep is good!

i don't remember when i first came across the animal print shop, but i really liked the idea of using these animal photographs in the baby's room. i haven't decided which prints to purchase (i love so many!), but i do have 3 white ikea frames and am planning on hanging them above the baby's crib.

while at ikea, i was also trying to find some storage solutions for baby items. after looking at all of their shelving options, i decided to get 3 of the long ribba ledges to use for books. after putting the chair, the crib, and the dresser in the baby's room, we quickly realized we had very little space left for other furniture. and we have a ton of books - in fact, my baby shower (which was last weekend and was so very very nice), was a book shower. hopefully these shelves will hold a lot of books! plus i thought that by facing the books cover out, the baby could see them, and it would help break up some of the darker wall color.

another ikea purchase was this small kitchen cart. i thought that i'd be able to use this next to the dresser to hold diapers and things like that, but after getting it home and putting it together, i don't think it's going to work as planned. i really like the cart, so hopefully i will find another use for it in the baby's room.

so that's pretty much where we are now. we have the big stuff in the room, and are still trying to figure out the small stuff. and after the baby shower we realized just how much storage space we need. we are going to install some shelving in the closet, which should help a lot. even though we plan on keeping most of the toys in the upstairs den, we would like to keep his books and stuffed animals in his room. i've been looking around online and actually found these storage benches from land of nod (i'm shocked that i actually like something that comes from a store for kids!) - you can also stack two of them for even more storage. i haven't bought anything yet, but i'm thinking about it. anyone else have any good ideas or sources? i probably can't fit anything anymore than 40" in length, and 14" in depth. since the book shelves will be hanging above it, i'd prefer to find something that's not very tall...

meanwhile, progress on the bathroom is on hold for a few weeks, we've just been so busy with life that we haven't had a chance to finish up the remaining project. we did start building our sink base though, i'm excited to finish that project up because then we will have a fully functioning bathroom again!

progress

By Katie | Published Monday, April 8, 2013

it's taking longer than expected (it always does), but we are making progress with the house projects. the tub refinisher came a few weeks ago and now we have a white tub! it looks great, a big improvement over the blue tub.

my family also visited last week and were a huge help with both the bathroom project and the baby room. in the bathroom, the tile is now done, we just need to grout a few areas. the walls and trim have also been painted. we still need to build the sink and do the closet project, but we're getting there.

in the baby room, the first thing we needed to do before putting the room back together was to fix a few electrical issues. the room only had one outlet, and it didn't even really work. the lack of outlets really limited what we could do with the room, and having extension cords running across the baby room didn't seem like a good solution. with my family's help, we were able to remove all of the baseboards, fix the existing outlet, and add 3 more (one on each wall). the previous owners had also installed drywall over the plaster walls without removing any of the woodwork, which has always annoyed me (the drywall stuck out over the woodwork). since we had to remove the baseboards to run the new electric, we were able to reinstall them in a way that looks much better. we also ended up painting the baseboards since they were in such bad shape. we are not planning on painting the window frame or the doors, but we might still paint the door frames. we're going to wait and see how it looks once things start to go back together.

my mom helped sew new curtains and a crib skirt for the baby, and we were able to finally put the crib together yesterday.

my family also drove with me to ikea to pick up a new sectional for the upstairs den, and some misc. items for the baby room. i feel really good about the progress that we've made on both the bathroom and the baby room, maybe my family should come visit more often :-)

speaking of progress...

we'll be 29 weeks tomorrow, crazy! sorry for the work bathroom photo, but i never seem to remember to take photos at home.

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baby room: part 1

By Katie | Published Wednesday, March 20, 2013

besides the most common "when are you due", and "are you going to find out if it's a boy or girl?", the other questions that i was often asked at the beginning of this pregnancy usually related to the baby's room. deciding to put the baby in small front bedroom next to our room seemed like the obvious choice. and while dark blue might not be a typical wall color for a baby's room, i liked the color and thought that we might be able to make it work. i knew that we didn't want a "themed" room, or anything that was overly cutesy or baby, so i was determined to make a calming, baby friendly space that still fit with the rest of our house.

one of the first purchases we made for the baby's room was a glider chair. as with most of our furniture purchases, we weren't really planning on buying a glider right away. but we found a chair that we really liked, at a great price, so we went ahead and got it. we went to west elm while in ohio after christmas to look at the graham glider. all their furniture was on sale and we really liked the glider, so we started thinking about making our first baby purchase... after doing a little more shopping and grabbing lunch, we went back to west elm to look at the chair again. the manager of the store rushed over as soon as we walked in the door to let us know that someone had just returned a brand new glider and she had set it aside for us, hoping we would come back. there was nothing wrong with it, they had just changed their minds. since it was out of the box, she could sell it to us at an additional discount. we decided that we couldn't argue with the price that she was offering, so we bought the chair. the glider is currently in ohio at my parents house because we couldn't fit it in the car, but they are going to bring it out in a few weeks. while i never really thought i'd buy a glider (i looked at an eames rocker instead), the general opinion from other parents is that we'd really like having a comfortable place to rock the baby. and this chair is super comfortable.

while in west elm, we also found a pendant light that we thought would look good with the dark walls. impulse buy number 2.

(impulse buy number 3 was the sectional for upstairs, which is still in our living room, but should hopefully be picked up soon)... we really need a west elm in st louis...

the other item that we saw and liked at west elm was a mid-century style dresser. the room is not very big, so we knew we wanted a smaller dresser that we could put a changing pad on top of. a lot of the mid-century style dressers are low, so we liked that this one was a little taller. while the dresser at west elm was really nice, we didn't really want to buy any more furniture. luckily, after a few weeks of craigslist stalking, i was able to find something similar. we did not pay very much for it, but it is in need of some repair. i'm hoping we are able to make our craigslist find work. i don't have a picture of it, but it's similar in size/style to the west elm dresser.

which brings us to the biggest baby room item - the crib. i knew that i would not find a crib that i liked at any of the chain baby stores, so the search for something else began. i actually liked a few options from ikea, but i wasn't sure about the finishes that they were offered in. i found plenty of high-end, really expensive options that i liked (the oeuf sparrow for example), but again, couldn't justify the prices. finally, i came across the crib below:

this is the babyletto hudson crib, which we were able to buy (on sale!) from amazon. it's still sitting in a box in our entryway, but i'm excited to put it together. i liked the fact that it was simple, and the gray color. it also looks similar to the sparrow crib.

one of the last larger items that we still need to purchase for the baby's room is a rug. i've been looking at the ikea alvine ruta rug. i'm driving up to ikea in a few weeks, so hopefully they will have it in stock, and we can get it for the room.

so that's where we are today. we still have some other small things to think about, but i'm hoping to get these items in to the room first so we can see what else we need (and what else will fit!). we need to finish up our bathroom project so we can focus on the baby room!

and ps - we did find out the sex of the baby - we're having a boy :-)

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the weekend

By Katie | Published Monday, March 11, 2013

saturday morning - we woke up early to get ready for the sectional delivery. the sectional that was supposed to go upstairs... and then didn't fit. such a huge disappointment. they ended up leaving the sectional in our living room so we could test it out and see if we liked it in that space (we have also been shopping new sofas for the living room). after living with it for 24 hours we decided that a sectional really doesn't work in that room. and we also discovered that the frame was bent on one side, so the sofa was damaged anyway. we are in the process of negotiating a return of the sectional. i think that we'll end up exchanging it for a different sofa from west elm for the living room. i hate to buy another sofa without seeing it in person and testing it out, but it is what it is.

saturday afternoon - after a rough start in the morning, we spent way too long trying to establish a level line on the bathroom wall to start tiling. the good news is that the tiling went pretty quick after that and we're loving how it's turning out. the bad news is that we still have a lot of tile to go! we have 1.75 walls done out of 7.

sunday - rugby day! and it rained the entire day. this is what mike looked like at the end of the game. just a little muddy... and that's a giant puddle behind him, not a pond.

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catching up...

By Katie | Published Friday, March 8, 2013

in addition to working on the bathroom, we've also made some progress on re-arranging rooms and furniture upstairs in preparation for baby. these photos are a few weeks old, but since everything is still in process, i haven't taken any updated photos yet.

this is the room that will become the baby room. we are planning to keep the dark blue wall color (it looks really dark in this photo, i promise it does have lot of blue in it). all of the furniture has been moved to the new guest room, we are in the process of getting new furniture for the baby's room.

this is our former office, which we have turned in to the guest room. the desk (already moved in the photo above), the rug, and the ikea chair are the only furniture that we are keeping upstairs, everything else has been moved to storage in the basement.

and finally the den. we are turning this room in to family room and office space. since the baby room isn't very big, we are hoping that we can keep a lot of the future toys in this room instead. we bought a couch for this room a few months ago and it is being delivered tomorrow. i'm a little nervous that it will not fit up the stairs. i'm also nervous because we haven't actually sat on the couch that we bought. we really wanted a certain west elm sofa but they did not have it in the store. so i'm hoping that they are able to get it up the stairs, and that it is comfortable!

we have a busy weekend planned, so check back next week for updates.

baby room: part 2

progress

baby room: part 1

the weekend

catching up...

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