Owl Nursery

I waited several years to have our first child with hopes and dreams being dashed month after month along the way.  Beyond the obvious desire to have my own baby to snuggle, love and raise, I also had the desire to design and make a beautiful nursery to put that little bundle of joy in.  Finally, after approximately three years of not-so-patiently waiting, my dream became a reality and I began to design a nursery for our little addition.

With so much time to think about what I wanted the nursery to look like, I knew that I wanted the color scheme to coordinate with our bedroom (which is teal, white and brown with contemporary furniture).  I also wanted the room to not be babyish so that we could use it for ourselves someday when our kid(s) moves downstairs...possibly as our office.  Our bedroom has very little privacy to the rest of the upstairs, so we would like it to continue to be a Master Suite once the baby is old enough to have a room on the 1st floor.  That said, here are some of the things that gave me the inspiration to get the nursery where it is today:

A while ago, I saw a nursery with a tree painted on the wall, and really liked the idea.  I swore that someday I would paint a tree in my nursery.  Then, I later saw this image and loved the trees & the silhouettes.

I knew that I wanted the nursery to have trees, but I wasn't really sure what type of theme should go with the trees.  When I saw this lamp from West Elm, I was sold on owls.

When I was sold on owls, I found this quilt on Etsy and fell totally in love.  This gave me my color scheme.

Once I had my ideas in order, the next step was to get them out of my head and onto paper (or in my case the computer).  Since I am an almost-architect I probably went a bit above and beyond a normal parent, creating a 3D model of the nursery and some elevations...I just couldn't help myself!

The elevations of the Nursery.

When I had my thoughts together and out of my head, and I was able to commit to a paint color (I was a bit nervous about painting the walls dark brown), we were ready to go.

First a few before shots:

We committed to the brown and went for it.  It was big change, but we both really liked the color when we were finished.

After the walls were painted, the next step was to figure out how to get the trees on the wall.  We ended up borrowing a projector from my husband's firm and projecting the trees (which I had traced from an image I found online in Adobe Illustrator) up on the walls.  It was a bit tricky since we couldn't get the projector far away enough from the wall to do the whole height at once, so I had to piece it together.  At first I was afraid it wasn't going to work, but once I got into a groove it went quickly.

The finished stenciling of the trees (chalk on paint).

When I was finished stenciling, the next step was to paint in the trees.  This was by far the most challenging and tedious.  It took me a few weeks, but I finally got it done!

When the trees were finished, the next step was to make the birds.  I cut them out of cardboard, and then wrapped them in orange and yellow fabrics.  Then, I just had to paint the inside of the closet and the inside of the dresser/bookcase and my painting was complete.  However, there was still a good amount of work to be done.  I put my husband to work fixing the existing built-in dresser and building shelving for the closet.  The original built-in dresser had six drawers.  We removed three of them and fixed the other three (they didn't slide very well).  Then, my husband built a shelf to cover the top drawer and create an open cubby with another smaller shelf inside.  For the closet, I had taken off the existing doors because I wanted to have an open closet with baskets and shelving and a small hanging area.

My projects for the finishing touches included a good deal of sewing.  First, my mother-in-law made some pillows for me and then after shopping at JoAnn Fabrics, I found some owl fabric that wasn't girly and decided to make covers for a couple more pillows that we already had at home.  I also made some little storage bags to hang above the changing area, that I had seen on Pinterest.  Even though my sewing skills are quite limited, the bags were quite easy to make and I was very happy with how they turned out.

Another sewing project that I did was making a mobile to hang above the crib.  I had found a mobile on etsy that I liked and set out to make my own.

My final sewing projects were curtains, a bench cover and a crib skirt, most of which I simplified once I got into them. For the curtains I looked several times for fabric that I liked to make them out of, but I couldn't find any that I liked.  Then, one day I was at Target when I saw a shower curtain that I liked.  I cut the curtain in half and used a curtain rod and curtain clips to hang it.  Thus the only sewing I did was on the edges that I cut so that it would not fray.  For the crib skirt, I had found directions to sew one on Pinterest.  I bought the fabric to do it, and then it dawned on me that it was a waste of fabric to make something that would go around the entire crib and cover the mattress support.  Instead, I dug out some double sided tape and stuck it on the top of the edges of the crib mattress support.  Then I cut a 10" strip of fabric and stuck it to the tape.  The entire project took about half an hour and no one can tell the difference.  Finally, for the bench cover, I used some 2" foam that I had at home and covered it with the remaining crib skirt and storage bag fabrics that I had.  I really didn't have a plan for sewing the cover, and if you look closely at it, you can tell.  However from a distance, it looks pretty good and I doubt anyone will ever look too closely at it.

For the room's furniture (other than the crib and chair), we went to IKEA.  I had wanted a long dresser to use as a counter/changing station.  However, I could not find one that I liked.  Instead, I found two regular size dressers that were on clearance and bought those.  We also got a shelf to use on edge as a bench (hence the need for a bench cover), some wall-hung shelves and some picture frames.  We used the wall-hung shelves to display some toys and a few of the bird houses that my mother-in-law had painted for my baby shower.  In the picture frames, I displayed three of the owl invitations that my mom had made for the baby shower she threw me on top of fabric that matched the nursery.  Finally, we placed the owl lamp from West Elm on the dresser counter.  When it was all together, the nursery was complete!  It was such a fun project to work on, and I am thrilled with how it turned out. 

Here are the final pictures.  Enjoy!

The best touch in the entire room: Our Baby Boy!