Yesterday was Monday and this summer I have Mondays off so taking advantage of the generosity of my parents I have scheduled four work days with them, days during which they take the three kids and my husband I work around the house, uninterrupted. It’s laborious bliss. I feel very spoiled and grateful.
There has been a flurry of design ideas for me this past week, and when they come I act, especially with dangerous sales lurking about, a mother joining me on shopping trip and these work days.
I’m trying to make our nursery work better for us. Currently there is no room in the room.
You can see I am not standing in the doorway, but outside the doorway for these photographs. I think it is a 10 x 12 foot room with a double size bed, crib, writing desk and footstool. For good measure I’ve stashed our glider in there because one evening baby would not go to bed (with me that is, when right to sleep when my husband came home and took over…daddy’s girl).
The logical solution is to take a piece of furniture out. Why am I desperately clinging to this gorgeous bed in a guest room no one ever uses and couldn’t use because it’s also the nursery? I do lay down in it some times. It’s wonderful to have a bed in there.
Moving quickly away from that question, I plan to move the bed to the wall. That will make the window look even more awkward. I want to fill the wall with curtains. Light beams through those the shutter slats, so curtains would be helpful, wall to wall curtains could trick the eye a bit.
At Joann’s, waiting for my mom as she had patriotic pillow fabric cut (see where I get this from?) I spotted a lovely midcentury-esque floral calico in a basket behind the counter. The price $4.50/yard. Two yards please. Remnant for 50% off? Well, shucks, okay.
After some mulling, I decided to make regular old pillow cases. They were a lot of work! I made every effort to get them precise because I really wanted them to look special, but I hate the idea of fancy shams filled with unusable pillows I’d have to purchase. Here is the outcome.
I have heard more than once that you should iron the fabric when you are sewing. For the first time I followed the advice. I hemmed, ironed, then sewed. It made worlds of difference!
The excitement over this fabric has led to inspiration on where to take the rest of the room, which doesn’t have a style, per se, just a color scheme.
I also painted an antique mirror for a baby shower gift. Two coats Annie Sloan’s Pure White Chalk Paint, the last coat in Paris Grey.
I completed the chair cushion for the latest upholstery project. I ordered 6 feet of 3 inch foam from Home Depot for $25 (this is an amazing price, by the way) and used polyester batting to fill it out.
Some laundry of course, all the sheets, the regulars, but I avoided dishes altogether.
The wild card of today’s adventures? Inspired by a magazine feature in Better Homes and Gardens’ July issue, I decided to paint the interior of my kid’s room closet and the back of their door in yellow. The walls are grey, the accents teal or pool. So this rounds off the beach colors I gather from my beloved print which hath traveled the country with me, twice.
The closet interior is Honey Glaze by Valspar. I purchased the pint-sized sample size so I was only about to paint the back wall of the closet.
The door is painted in Sundance by Sherwin Williams. This is a golden yellow. The hallway side of the door is still white so it adds zest only to the kids’ room.
I used a foam roller and paintbrush for the door and a regular roller for the closet interior. Using a roller creates a smoother finish and saves you oodles of time. The foam of the roller made it easier to get a first coat in all the grooves but a paintbrush had to be used to get complete coverage in those.
So you can see how they complement without being at all matchy-matchy.
For my husband, he hung a peg board in the garage, organized his tools, moved a hose faucet, installed a hose reel and hung a hammock which turns out to be too low to hold anyone heavier than 90 lbs above the ground.
It feels amazing to start and complete projects, a luxury of not having the children around. Still, I was awfully glad to get them back at the of the day!