Not only are we having a baby, but our best friends Shannon and Dom are having one less than a month before us! Yaaay, you get two nurseries for the price of one in a way 🙂 So this weekend we headed over to their house to help them install a chair rail in their nursery. We’ve only done one chair rail install ourselves and that was in our entryway a few months ago, but we were more than willing to help them out. Our entryway was actually more complicated and larger than their room, so the process was pretty simple this time around.

We were the brains, the boys offered the brawn.

Very important to this process this time around was our brand new nail gun. We picked up this small pneumatic nail gun while it was on sale at Lowe’s a couple of months ago. We paid about $75 for it (which I think we put some of on a gift card) and it was worth every penny. The compresser was nice and small, light and not very loud at all.

We knew this was a smart investment because we have plenty of other molding plans up our sleeves (including our own nursery) and our previous nail gun was electric. It weighed a ton and wasn’t powerful enough to shoot the nails all the way through the molding, so we had to go back and hammer them in. Not only does this thing fully sink in nails, the compresser can be used to inflate tires. Who knew? 🙂

The rest of the process we pretty much explained in our entryway post. Please excuse the inconsistently weird colors in these pics, they were taken at night.

We didn’t caulk or paint it, but at least you can see all of our cuts and nail holes 🙂

We also got a chance to add my favorite little part of a chair rail to this room… the end pieces. We once again just glued them on (I wasn’t putting my finger on that small piece of molding and shooting it in!) and held them in place with some tape while they dried. We didn’t have any painter’s tape on hand, so plain ol’ Scotch it was!

They haven’t done anything else to the room yet (it’s not staying yellow), but the uncaulked, unpainted chair rail already makes such a difference!

Mike and I looove all sorts of molding and we don’t mind installing it either. Painting is another topic for Mike, he hates painting. With our new nail gun, we’re looking forward to finishing up our entryway, molding out the baby’s room and making some built-in things. Hopefully we can start planning all of that soon because our new flooring has been delivered and is set to be installed next week! 🙂

Please excuse the iPhone picture, but this is literally the third time since we’ve lived here (which has only been a year and a half) that we’ve had boxes of flooring in our living room. Okay twice was because we wanted it, once was the builder’s fault, but hopefully this is it for us and we can get to decorating some new rooms! 🙂

ps- As I was searching through my old chair rail posts, I re-read this one from July 11th when we painted the bottom half of our entryway wall. It also happened to be the day we found out Darwin has cancer, so reading it nearly broke my heart all over again. BUT, in a happy way. Everything written that day, that he lost even more weight, that he had lost more than 75% of his kidney function, has been reversed. As of Sunday, Darwin finally broke into the 7lb range (7lbs 3oz at that!) and has begun to regain some of his muscle mass. I felt sick on Sunday so when he came back from the vet with Mike and happily trotted over to me on the couch, I was the proudest momma in the whole world 🙂

I will not paint stripes in the new nursery.  I will not paint stripes in the new nursery.  I will not paint stripes in the new nursery.  I will not paint stripes ever again.

Okay I feel somewhat better.  It’s funny that while browsing on Pinterest, I find nurseries with stripes.  You’d think after painting stripes in the office, I’d refuse to look at any inspiration involving painted stripes.  Oh and crap, I just admitted I browse Pinterest. Wife, I am NOT painting stripes in the nursery.  But don’t these look awesome?

Especially this one posted on Color Chats.  The stripes are very similar to the office which is probably why it immediately caught my eye.  I also love how the light fixture’s dark color really stands out against the rest of the room.

And then I saw these zig-zag stripes featured on Chic & Cheap Nursery.  Why do I feel like I’m going to be painting something similar one day?  Again, similar colors to the office, but with a splash of yellow.  And if you check the link, the design board also includes our giraffe lights.

Rebecca and I had once talked about doing stripes on the ceiling so it was no surprise when I stumbled upon this nursery on Project Nursery.  I love the stripes on the ceiling with the black-ish wall and furniture.

Enough with the stripes.  The sconce on this nursery below first grabbed my attention.  I always enjoy simple lights like these especially used over bedding.  And then I realized what the sconce was mounted on — barn doors.  How freaking awesome?  Where does this guy get barn doors from?  The muted colored crib against the doors is awesome, too.

And the typography on this wall above the crib?  Um.  AWESOME.  Love the fact that it’s an alphabet mural but they totally thought outside of the box with it.

Looks like I’ll have plenty of painting to do between the crazy stripes and the alphabet mural.  You win this one wife.

Today is a milestone for my little bloggy, this is my 100th post! Cue the balloon drop! Okay I don’t have a balloon drop, but I do have this video I found of the parade through the Magic Kingdom in Disney…

This song has been in our heads for a week. Though I didn’t know the words were “Celebrate a dream come true” and I normally just run around singing “Celebrate da datty doooo”. I also perform the arm waving dance, which I did once while entering the Magic Kingdom and my beloved iPhone took a flying leap out of my pocket and onto the concrete. Mike told me this was a sign from God to never do that dance in public again. Luckily I can still bust it out in the house!

It took me about 4 months (of actual “serious” blogging) to get to this point. So I figured I’d set out some goals to accomplish by my next milestones. A list, shall we?

By my 200th post:

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I would like to have painted another room in this house. Whether it’s the office, powder room or master, within another 4 months I hope to have told you about some new color on our walls!

By my 300th post:

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We have been wanting to add some lighting to our landscaping since our yard is ridiculously dark at night. I would also like to change out some of our builder given landscaping with maybe some more hydrangeas. That is, if the two I planted last summer come back to life!

By my 400th post:

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I would love to have our master bedroom completely (or almost completely) finished and made-over. I don’t necessarily want it to look like this one, I just picked a dreamy looking one 🙂

By my 500th post:

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A nice finished basement with a pimped out theater area. Mike can go crazy with all of his speakers and wires and whatnot, and I can get a couch with cup holders in it without feeling like I’m breaking a design rule…

By my 1,000th post:

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We’ve been dreaming up a nice backyard area for ages and well, this one wouldn’t be so shabby! We’re not sure if we want to do a deck, patio or combination type thing, so this project isn’t a big priority. Once we feel like we need an outdoor entertaining space we’ll look into it a little bit more!

By my 1,500th post:

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If you’ve done the math at this point, you’d know this one is very far down the line, but I hope to be able to add a nursery to my resume in a few years. I love browsing nurseries, they are just so fun and imaginative. This one is one of Young House Love’s great nursery crashes on Baby Center. Oh and with a nursery of course comes a spin-off blog 🙂 You think that I’d dedicate a blog to my cats and house but not dedicate one to my future kids?

Hopefully I’ll keep up with some of these goals, at least the ones within the next year or so. It will be interesting to see how many posts it takes me to actually finish and post about each thing! Now I’m off to celebrate a dream come true by watching a new episode of Jersey Shore!!