Armed with a retro theme in mind, I started the fabric hunt next. I knew I would be sewing my own crib sheets, curtains, and changing pad cover, so the fabric would be next on the list of priorities.
Michael Miller's Primary Puppy, and Out n' About Retro Road Signs by Caleb Gray for the sheets with accents from Jenn Ski's Mod Century collection.
From there I picked my paint color.
A weird thing happened while I was pregnant- I became very indecisive and insecure about my design choices- which contributed to the blogging hiatus. It took me two days to decide on a paint color for the nursery. I knew it would be an almost white, barely there color, but it would dramatically affect every other choice. I finally selected the perfect shade of light green. And then, while sitting in the living room, I held the swatch up to the wall and realized it is the exact color of my living room- no wonder I liked it.
I'm usually the painter, but since WD didn't want to be around the fumes of even low VOC paint, he painted the nursery for me!
When we went to get the paint the Behr sales rep was in the store, and he explained that low and no VOC paint is only low & no while it's untinted. The tint has VOCs and the darker the color, the more tint required, and the more VOCs added back in. Very interesting!
A quick trip to "the happiest place on earth," Ikea, and an awesome dresser given to us from my cousin Roger, and we were ready to start furnishing.
I painted the back of these book shelves* with 2 $2 jars of tester paint before assembling them.
Then I primed and painted the dresser with an orange paint I had in my oops paint stash.
The lined drawers made it so happy and perfect.
I added a coat of Polycrylic for some shine, and left it to dry.
The next day I returned to find the whole top of the dresser and part of the sides looked like it had been painted with crackle finish paint. OH NO, NO, NO!
My mom suspects that it was probably cleaned with some sort of oily furniture polish in its original life, which reacted with the Polycrylic.
Well even if I re-painted it might still crackle again, and we were only guessing the Polycrylic caused the reaction, it may have only sped up the inevitable.
So I primed the top again, and decoupaged varying shades and sizes of orange tissue paper squares to the top. The side closest to the crib is still crackled, but since you can't see it, I didn't worry about it for now.
Here is the beginning of it coming together around March.
*Although I LOVE my bookcase wall and it has been a tremendous help with storage, it has taken a LONG time for the pressed-wood-toxic-chemical smell to dissipate... like 6 months with an air purifier running in there 24/7. If you live in the kind of climate where you can air them out outside or in the garage I would highly recommend it. Since we try and avoid anything with a chemical smell in our house, as much as possible, I know I am more sensitive to these smells than most people. WD doesn't smell it, but boys never smell anything.
