Finally, a project I can show you, just not the wide angle photos Remember that bookcase we ordered from Target a couple of weeks ago (the Carson 2-shelf bookcase)? I told you I planned to paint the back of it green, like so…

Yes I know, I am an excellent Photoshopper. I’m working on it Anyway, the bookcase arrived and it took us a while to get to the back of it, so it sat in the baby’s room like this…

I didn’t put anything on it but a fan to keep me cool while working in there because I knew it would all eventually have to be removed anyway.

The problem was that the almost cardboard-like back was absorbing the paint. The first coat of green we put on literally disappeared. Mike ended up having to use 2 coats of the Valspar high performance, low-VOC primer that we used on the unfinished wood boards on the paneled wall. After those 2 coats of primer, we were able use the same Olympic zero VOC paint we used for the closet (Lettuce Alone B68-3)… but we still did about 2-3 coats of that to get to the level of green we wanted.

Needless to say, between on our other projects and whatnot going on, this whole multiple coat process took us a while. Finally on Friday, we were able to attach the back to the bookcase!

It turned out so adorable and I wasted no time filling her up!

The top shelf holds, well, books.

And the bottom shelf holds a basket full of toys.

If only I could keep the toy collection limited to what fits in this basket. It’s already exceeded the basket and takes up a drawer in the closet, as well as an additional storage bin of older aged toys in our spare bedroom. When we realized that we haven’t even bought our child a single toy, nor did we register for any, we realized we need to start working on that playroom ASAP! Mike literally started working on the new office again yesterday so that we can have the old office for baby gear storage. Clutter is my arch nemesis.

The top shelf of the bookcase holds our adult books and that fabulous fan.

I love this fan because it’s 100% metal, even the switch to turn it on and off. It’s the Hunter Classic Table Fan from Target.

Next up is to come up with a gallery wall design to hang over this little bookcase. Off to Michael’s now to search for one part of it so hopefully I can get an idea of an arrangement today!

ps- Yes, still pregnant. 41 weeks tomorrow.

pps- Sorry if you tried to visit on Friday or Saturday and the site was down. Apparently there was a server upgrade we weren’t aware of that took for.ev.er. to fix.

During the past week or so, Mike and I have been busy chipping away at nursery projects. So busy, in fact, that we have way more to blog about than we have left to do. It’s so amazing and exciting to see the room come together and I am itching to share everything. Right now, we’ve been focusing on getting everything done before the little one is here. With each extra day we get comes a new opportunity to tackle some projects.

Right around the time Mike finished installing the giraffe sconces, the missing closet piece arrived. They sent us an entire new panel for the screw/bolt part we needed. In case you need a refresher, we bought an Allen + Roth premium wood closet system from Lowe’s.

(via Lowe’s)

We have a similar version in our master closet and love it. In our old place, we used some inexpensive Closetmaid organizers that ended up falling apart on us. Like, I literally pulled open a drawer one day and the entire front came unglued. Since then we stick to the solid wood products from Lowe’s. We can cut the shelves down to whatever size we need and customize all of the configurations.

Mike got to putting together the center tower right away. Then, being the rocket scientists we are, we had to figure out how to get the tall tower into the actual closet.

It took a few tilts and laughs, but we got it in.

By we, I mean Mike. I pretty much sat in the glider through the whole process, snapping pictures with my iPhone.

Please note the white paint all over my pajama pants. They were the victim of the spilled tray of paint while I stenciled the closet.

After we got the tower in, we went back to Lowe’s to pick up some shelves. We needed 25 inch wide shelves on each side. The shelves came in 21″, 48″ or 72″. None of those options were ideal. We literally scratched our heads in Lowe’s forever trying to figure out how we can pull this all off. Another problem was that the clothing rods Lowe’s sold were too large. We checked some of their other brands and saw some expandable rods that were 24″-36″, but they were in white. To save some money, we decided to only get one of the 72″ shelves and just do shelves over the top rod of the closet. We went to Home Depot to see if they had any chrome rods that would fit the 25″ we needed. Thankfully they did!

We got home and Mike cut 2 shelves to 25″. He installed them with some brackets, anchoring them to two walls and the tower. Just below each shelf, we put a clothing rod.

To gauge where we wanted to put the next level of rods, we grabbed one of Mike’s shirts for some scale (since baby clothes are so tiny).

Then we decided something. Since baby clothes are so small, we decided we DID want to do that second level of shelves. We knew it would look better and give us a place to put little shoes and stuff. We know for an adult a shelf might not be practical, but it can always be removed.

Back to Lowe’s Mike went for another 72″ shelf! He repeated the shelf and rod process on the lower level and we were almost done!

Next, the drawers went in… we decided to get 3. The bottom of the tower can be left as shelves, drawers, metal baskets or a shoe rack. We were going to do just 2 drawers but then decided that the closed storage is more versatile.

We went with the flat front panel, but Lowe’s also sells a more traditional, beveled drawer front. Oh and for the tower? They give you both a straight top piece and a curved one. This baffled both of us for a while because we wanted the straight piece but all of the boxes had the curved piece on the picture. We didn’t realize it came with both options, pretty clever.

We also decided to stick with the hardware that came with the drawers. Why not? We like it. Maybe down the road we’ll go for something more custom, but it’s perfectly fine with me right now.

I couldn’t back up to take better pictures because there was a lot of furniture in the way behind me (we were working on hanging curtains on the same day, so things were shifted).

I almost forgot to include a picture with the shelves in the tower! I didn’t realize that the zoomed out pictures were taken before we put them in, so here they are!

Of course, it took me about 2 minutes to run to the spare bedroom and grab all of the baby’s clothes that have been living in there since we started this. The closet was stocked about 5 minutes later I put newborn clothes on one rod, 0-3 months on another, 3-6 months on the next rod and 6-12 months on the last rod. It’s pretty amazing to be nice and organized. In the drawers right now are smaller odds and ends, though the drawers are amazingly deep and have a nice little self closing feature. I fit an entire breast pump (still in the box) along with a bunch of accessories and a nursing cover in one of the drawers. The top shelves are home to some baskets and the tower is currently holding Boppys, a basket and some little decorative items.

The bookcase has arrived and I painted the back of it green, only to have the paint not stick at all, so Mike had to coat it with a layer of primer for me (since it wasn’t no-VOC). He finished that tonight so hopefully the next layer of green I put on actually works! I also made some chevron curtains, a bed skirt, made the crib, decorated the changing area and designed some ABC art in Photoshop. Once this baby actually comes, I can share some real after pictures!

You know how sometimes things have to look worse before they look better? That seems to be the case with our nursery progress as of this weekend.

(Sorry pictures are a little blurry today, it’s rainy out and I took them this morning before putting my contacts in. Whoops.)

We set out to conquer a bunch of things on our to-do list. Mostly, we were all set to make the closet pretty. We originally talked about our plans for the baby’s closet here. I know I’ve mentioned that I plan to stencil the closet, but I don’t think I’ve exactly explained the plan. It will be white polka dots.

So the majority of the mess in the nursery? Pieces of the closet system.

We started to put pieces together only to discover that we’re missing a screw… literally. Mike called Allen + Roth and they will be sending us a new piece, but it can take anywhere from 1-7 days. Whaaamp whaaamp. Slight setback, but that’s okay because the closet has to be stenciled first! Which brings us to clutter cause #2…

I got all ready to stencil on Sunday with the supplies that Cutting Edge Stencils so kindly sent me way back in December. The problem was that it took me so long to actually stencil and I left the stencil rolled in the shipping tube it came in. So it was way too curly to use and I had to let it sit for a few days.

Holding down the stencil are some books and a fan we picked up for the room this weekend. It seems to be working and is pretty flat at this point. Hopefully I can tackle that in the next day or so. Until then, the ottoman is home to directions for both the stencil and the closet system.

The crib has become a catch all for the storage bins that will eventually find a home in the closet.

But the good news is that we did get a lot done overall. Those two little outfits are all washed for the hospital. The dark gray one is my first choice (complete with gender specific hat and blanky) and the chevron one is a larger size incase I have a big baby. I decided to go with a gender neutral outfit because the baby is usually all blanket and hat in the beginning anyway and the gray looks so nice with both baby pink and blue

We also assembled most of our gear this weekend and it has found a home in the corner of the nursery.

We tucked this stuff in here because the last time we left something in the family room this happened…

Don’t worry, the bassinet pad hadn’t been washed yet. The stroller will be in the garage so Macky won’t get used to free rides… not that I pushed him around the family room in there or anything. Okay I did. I considered it quality control.

Finally, you may have noticed the giant elephant frame in the room. We made a trip to Ikea this weekend and picked up a frame for our alphabet print over the dresser.

I started my maternity leave today, so I’m hoping to wrap most of this stuff up this week. I probably won’t stick to my usual posting times, since well, I can post whenever I want now!! Though I’ll probably stick to weekdays since that’s when Mike works. I decided to take last night off after work so I could celebrate by sitting on the couch with a giant bowl of ice cream. It was fabulous

It’s that time again, time for Young House Love and Bower Power‘s Pinterest challenge! For the last two Pinterest challenges, I made paintings… one was the landscapes I hung in our dining room and the other was a pencil eraser monogram. I really had no clue what to make this time since we’re still in the middle of painting the nursery and not quite ready for any other projects in there. I also did not want to tackle any other large projects on our to-do list, since the nursery is our primary focus these days (considering we only have 8 weeks, eek!) I was honestly thinking I’d sit this one out when Mike reminded me that we picked up some things from Ikea a while back to organize our gift wrap. He’s a keeper.

Cue the Pinspiration!

(from BHG via Pinterest)

Up until this point, I’ve stored gift wrap in one of those Rubbermaid gift wrap containers. Problem was it didn’t really accomodate my ribbon collection or taller wrapping paper. Our wrapping paper has been hanging out in our guest room and this year I decided to use the Rubbermaid container exclusively for Christmas wrapping stuff. Considering the guest room looks like this as of our baby shower this weekend, this challenge could not have come at a better time….

This is only the smaller gifts… the larger ones are downstairs. Once the baby’s closet is all painted and done, we can move this stuff out of here. All the way in the corner was my wrapping paper collection, I rescued it from the sea of baby.

I decided to use another organizing method I found on Pinterest, this one from A Brooklyn Limestone.

(from A Brooklyn Limestone via Pinterest)

We picked up supplies to tackle this back when we were on a new office kick. We literally dropped everything to work on the nursery once February rolled around, so this got put on the back burner. We pretty much bought exactly the same supplies as the inspiration picture, with a few modifications….

3 Bygel rails

1 Bygel wire basket

1 pack of Dignitet curtain clips

4 Gruntal cutlery caddies

I didn’t take any in progress pictures except for this one, please excuse the mess all over the place. This room was our clutter and sawing area while working on the nursery.

The process was pretty simple and self explanatory. Some important things to note though, the bars do not come with screws. Also, if you go with the Grundtal cups, they screws they give you (or at least they gave us) were too short. So keep some spare screws nearby

Here’s our finished product (with crappy night photos because I got home from work late)

I know, the quality of that picture makes me cringe too. I tried 8 million times to take a better one but the room just has poor lighting at night. Anyway! We decided to put our wrapping paper up top since our door is super narrow and we had to work around the door knob.

Next, we put 3 cups with some Sharpies, bows and paint brushes for now. Once we fully move the office upstairs I will have tons more crafty things to put in these.

On the bottom we put a flat wire rack with ribbon in it and another cup full of colored tissue paper.

All in all, it was a super easy and cheap way to be able to see all of my pretty stuff. Plus it holds way more wrapping paper than I thought it would.

And the best part? It hides away nicely behind a door

Be sure to check out Sherry’s (Young House Love) and Katie’s (Bower Power) projects tomorrow. Plus, this time around they’ve teamed up with Cassie from Hi Sugarplum and Erin from The Great Indoors, so check out their projects as well. I shall be in all 4 places tomorrow

ps- maybe i can update this with better daylight pictures tomorrow!

I haven’t slept well the past several days. Darwin had a urinary tract infection, on top of kidney failure, which led to many unpleasant accidents that may have occurred on my lap…while I was sleeping. I’ve been peed and puked on way too many times before this baby has arrived. I know, TMI, but I’m just being honest here Throw in a super active baby lately and when I finally have the opportunity to sleep, someone is waking me up from the inside. Needless to say, I’m a zombie and I spent the weekend cleaning and organizing some baby stuff that we’re borrowing from my brother and sister-in-law. I felt very accomplished and feel much better about life (and Darwin started some antibiotics and has been accident free, whew!) But, it leaves you with a post full of randomness. Because that’s what’s going on in my head today!

On Friday, Mike and I returned to Babies R Us to test out the glider I wrote about last week. When I kicked my feet up onto the ottoman, I noticed something…

Yes I was wearing gray leggings and gray boots while sitting on a gray chair. At least now I have a good idea of the color and I might be carrying around my leggings as a swatch. Speaking of swatches, in the background are all of the other colors the chair comes in. I think we’re going to go for it, I’m just scoping out coupons and hoping for a Presidents’ Day sale.

Next to the picture of my gray boots on gray pants on gray chair on my phone is a picture of my gray cat…

Isn’t she pretty? She’s not often seen around here, as she normally resorts to a mean face when the camera comes out. Plus she’s often in the shadow of her two special needs brothers, though she gets plenty of loving. She’s my constant sidekick (sitting with me at the moment). I wonder if she knows how chic her gray coat is these days?

Something the complete opposite of gray (okay it’s rainbow), is my Valentine’s Day gift from Mike. I’m trying to organize my life (hence the mass decluttering I did this weekend), so Mike bought me this Erin Condren planner in the multi-colored chevron pattern…

(via Erin Condren)

Yes I know it’s early, but the box it came in was so obvious that I knew what it was when it arrived today. I wanted one last year, but this adorable video won me over.

(via Erin Condren)

I am already in love with it and it’s only been a couple of hours. I normally carry a small planner, a notebook for blog ideas and I end up sticking post-its all over my notebook/planner/wallet (yes I have a habit of sticking to-do lists to my wallet!) I figured this is only going to get worse as I juggle baby, work, blog and life, so it was time to upgrade my shabby little Target monthly planner I’ve been using for years. It comes with folders for stray papers and blank pages with each month, but possibly my favorite part of my new planner? The monthly and weekly goals and to-do lists…

The only way I managed to keep my head on straight through school, doctor’s appointments, work and blog posts in the fall was constant planning. I pretty much plan out my weekdays from 7am until 10pm in order to get everything done. I try to save Friday night for down time (but it usually turns into running errands) and weekends for doing projects. This planner has days broken into morning, day and night so I no longer have to cram things into one little box that I normally wrote on the top and bottom of. Michelle from Ten June also has one and she gave a nice little rundown of the features here.

Already filled in for this week’s goal? Install crown molding and baseboards in the baby’s room. Thanks to a 3 day weekend coming up, I’m feeling optimistic. Or maybe it’s the stickers with my name on them that came with my planner that made me feel a little brighter?