After a few months of work, mostly on the weekends, I’ve finished the painting in the nursery. This included the walls in the room as well as the crib that was handed down from a friend.
The colors we chose were from a crib bedding set we found several months back. The room has three walls that are a powder blue, which I painted before we knew that we are having a boy. When I finished these 3 walls, I stood there and looked at them, wondering: “if this is a girl, how can we ‘girlify’ powder blue walls?” I imagined painting lots of flowers and butterflies and the like. Because I sure wasn’t going to re-paint it all pink! (needless to say, I breathed a sigh of relief when we found out it’s a boy) The fourth wall is an accent wall that is pure white with stripes of color taken from the bedding. The comforter has square panels with various designs, and one of the panels has stripes of all the colors in the design; powder blue, teal blue, green, and brown. I took the design of the stripes and painted them on the accent wall, in a larger version.
Just for the record, painting stripes on a wall is not easy. If you plan on doing it, make sure you give yourself lots of time to prep… and be extremely patient! There was a tip that we found to prevent the paint from seeping under the tape used for masking… which was to remove the tape as you were painting the stripe. This didn’t work very well, it helped very minimally at best. I ended up going over the edge of each stripe with white paint to touch-up the rough edges. It was tedious, but worth it since the stripes came out great.
Now for the crib! Some of the crib was solid wood, like the slats and the drawers. And the other parts, all of the large pieces, were wood veneer that matched the color. We wanted to make it white, so I knew it had to be primed and then painted. First it had to be disassembled so that I could get to all the tight spaces. Lots of spray on primer was used… about 3 coats. Then sanding it down to get it smooth. For the paint, I got a power sprayer, which turned out leaving the surface of the paint sort of rough to the touch. So, I sanded some more, and then just used a roller. In the end, after all the time and work put into it… I would have rather just bought a white crib!
Check out a larger version of the photo here, as well as a before shot.
Now there’s just some finishing touches to complete the room. Mostly these involve decorating the walls.
