Nursery Dresser

We picked up this dresser on Craigslist for $100. It was posted for over $200 but the girl selling it was moving out of state and had to get rid of it so we got it for a steal. It is structurally in excellent condition. It is super heavy and made of solid wood. I don't know where you can find a solid wood dresser for 100 bucks these days, most furniture stores charge upwards of $1000 for a solid wood dresser. We decided to refinish this and use it as the changing table and dresser for the baby's room. I wanted a white dresser in there, and while this piece is already white, there are several marks on the top and on the drawers, it definitely needs a fresh coat of paint. Plus, the hardware is dated and doesn't go with the coastal vibe I have in mind for the nursery.

Since I'm pregnant and my doctor doesn't want me sanding or refinishing any furniture right now, Todd has taken over this little project. I would love to be helping out more, we all know I love a good DIY project, but he is loving working on something that will be used by our little one for many years. We first removed the old hardware. The knobs look so small on such large drawers and are spaced too far apart to be able to easily open and close the larger bottom drawers. Since we knew we would be replacing the hardware and changing the placement, Todd filled in the original holes with wood filler.

We decided since the surface was pretty beat up it would be best to sand it down to get a smooth surface for a fresh coat of paint. Todd started this process at our house, but as you can see in the background, our garage is a disaster zone and the weather has been quite unpredictable lately. He took the dresser over to his parents house to utilize their garage to finish sanding and painting. They have more space where he could lay out all the drawers to dry without fear of a sudden pop up rain shower ruining the paint.

The dresser is going to be right in front of a window in the nursery. We opted for the same white as all of the trim work and doors in our house for the dresser paint. This way everything matches and the dresser won't look weird with the blinds and window casing directly behind it. I am not big on everything being matchy matchy, but if the trim and doors are one shade of white and the dresser a different shade, it would look like we tried to match and missed and would be an eyesore. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that to rationalize my crazy pregnancy brain. haha.

I picked up several handle and knob options from the hardware store and didn't love any of them. Ultimately, we settled on these handles from Lowes. The knobs on our built in cabinets are from the same collection. The knobs on our cabinets have a brushed nickel finish, but we opted for the bronze finish for the dresser pulls. We changed the placement of the handles. We centered the pulls on the smaller top drawers first. Once those were centered, we lined up the hardware on the two larger drawers. Now that the handles are closer together on the larger drawers it is much easier to open and close the drawers.

Todd painted the dresser beautifully. He also put some wax on the bottoms of the drawers to help them glide easily in and out of the dresser. We are so pleased with how the dresser turned out. After he was all done, we moved it into the room. I got to work right away lining the drawers. Now all we need to do is start washing everything and put it all away. We are so excited to fill this piece with all the baby's tiny clothes, blankets and necessities. 

A Coastal Nursery - Mood Board

I started coming up with inspiration images for our baby's room. The room is already painted a beautiful blue/green color which we love. We want something gender neutral but nothing super babyish. Neither of us are really into themed nurseries. I do love coastal decor so we are going for more of a coastal feel, not necessarily a nautical or beach theme. Here is just a fun little mood board of items I've seen online that I like and think could fit the coastal vibe.

Sources:
Chair and mobile - Pottery Barn Kids
Light Gray knit ottoman - RH Baby and Child
Cribs - Buy Buy Baby
Square pouf ottomans and Lamps - Target
Dresser - Already purchased, Craigslist
Drapery and Carpet - Stock images
Dark Gray Knit Ottoman - CB2
Paint - Sherwin Williams Halcyon Green

Guess what...

We announced on Facebook today some very exciting news. I'll let the pups share the news with you. 

Ellie and Niah are going to be big sisters! We are so excited to welcome a sweet baby to our family at the end of December. We wanted to wait and announce until I was into the second trimester and we had a chance to tell close friends and family in person first. We are beyond excited and can't wait to meet our little one. 

Some questions we've been getting: 
How are you feeling? Great now! I had a rough first trimester, lots of nausea, zero appetite and lots of getting sick. I am past all of that now and feeling great. Starting to wear more maternity clothes and this little bump is starting to pop. 

Are you finding out the gender? Nope! We feel there are very few true surprises in life and this is one of them. I can't wait to meet him or her on their birthday. 

Do you have a name picked? We have a few in mind that we like, but we aren't planning on sharing name options with anyone. We don't want to settle on the name until we meet the baby and have a chance to enjoy a few moments with him or her to determine if the name truly suits them. 

We are just so excited! We'll be re-doing a few rooms in the house in order to prepare for little one's arrival so I'll be sure to update on all those plans and projects as they unfold. 

Home Tour: Craft Room

As I mentioned last week, there are two bedrooms on the second floor of our home. The other day I showed you our guest bedroom. Today I'm going to share my sewing / craft room. Just a note, this room is never this clean as I almost always have a project going on or a quilt laid out on the floor. I tried to keep the furniture to a minimum so that I would have plenty of floor space to lay out quilt blocks as I'm working.

The closet has a small shelf at the back that holds all of my paper crafting supplies - scissors, paper cutter, paper, stickers, etc. The hanging sweater organizer is perfect for holding all of my fabrics. The wicker basket holds my fabric scraps. One day I'll probably replace this with another method to sort the scraps by color or something, but for now this works.

In the built in cabinets I store quilt batting and miscellaneous crafting supplies. I store the items I use the most either in the desk or on the shelves below the cutting table. These would be things like fabric scissors, pens, quilting rulers, rotary cutters, thread, etc.

Now that this room is spotless, I think it is time for me to get started on a new project!


Source List: 
Paint - Sherwin Williams Halcyon Green
Desk - hand me down from family
Table - Ikea
Swivel Chair - overstock outlet
Wood Chair - hand me down from family
TV stand - Target
Book shelf - hand me down from family
Pink Chair - family heirloom
Artwork - souvenirs from our travels


If I missed anything and you want to know where it is from, please comment below.

Home Tour: Guest Room

There are two bedrooms on the second floor of our home. We are currently using one as a guest bedroom and the other is set up as my craft room. We don't have overnight guests often but when we do it is nice to have a place for them to stay. We use the closet to store our off season clothing and suitcases. Extra bed linens, toilet paper, paper towels, etc are stored in the built in cabinets.

Of course Ellie couldn't resist coming to help out for the photos. :) 

Source List: 
Paint - Sherwin Williams Friendly Yellow
Bench - hand me down from family
Comforter and dust ruffle - Macy's
Sheets - Bed Bath and Beyond
Lamps - Pottery Barn Outlet
Black Stacking Shelves - old from Bed Bath and Beyond
Vanity table and stool - Everything But The House Auction
Night Stand - hand me down from family
Frames - Michaels
Artwork - from our travels
Mirror - thrift store
Chest - craft show many years ago



If I missed anything and you want to know where it is from, please comment below.

Tiny Closets - DIY Bedroom Closet Makeover

Our home was built in the 1950s and like most older homes, it has lots of charm and very tiny closets. Exhibit A: our bedroom closet is exactly the same size as our hall closet. This means there is not nearly enough storage for both of us to store our clothing. We do our best to limit the amount of clothing we have and store off season clothing in the basement, but even with that, the storage situation isn't great. The closet in our bedroom holds most of my clothing. Todd utilizes a dresser in our bedroom and any items he has that need to be hung up are stored across the hall in the closet in our office. It isn't a perfect system, but it works for us. Hopefully in the near future we'll get new dressers that better suit our folded clothing needs. 

Our bedroom closet measures approximately 35" wide and between 30" and 35" deep.  

Unfortunately I forgot to take true before pictures. I was just so darn excited to finally get this closet under control and get some much needed storage, I had already emptied most of it out. Before the floor was covered in boots, a box of clothes and other nonsense. 

The two shelves up top hold two storage cubes each. The cubes on the top shelf hold Todd's socks and underwear and the shelf below holds mine. This system works great for us. Before when this closet only held my things the top shelf was wasted since I couldn't reach anything on the top shelf without a step ladder. These shelves were already here when we moved in and were perfectly spaced apart for these cubes I picked up from Target.

What DIY project is complete without a good supervisor?

We decided to leave the top shelf as is but wanted to increase our storage functionality in the lower half of the closet. Originally the closet bar hung directly below the lower shelf. In order to add drawers at the bottom and still keep space to hang longer dresses we decided to cut the bar into two sections. Todd was the mastermind behind the structure of the new support boards. We measured the width of two cubes and cut the shelf and rod to fit. We then measured and cut a new vertical support board. 

This support board is mounted with angle brackets to the wall and shelf. The rod is mounted using standard closet rod brackets from the hardware store. We may have gone overboard on the angle brackets, but they are mostly hidden and we wanted to be sure that they would support the weight of the shelf and any clothing hanging from the rods. We then mounted the brackets and rod on the right side of the new support board. After everything was installed, we painted the support board white.

We used parts of the Ikea Algot Wall System to increase our storage in the lower half of the closet. This system was super easy to install. You simply attach the long vertical brackets to the wall and snap in the brackets that hold either the shelves or drawers. The vertical brackets were too tall for our space so we cut them down to fit.

We opted for one large mesh drawer on the bottom with two smaller drawers above. We also added a shelf above the top drawer. The shelf isn't really functional for storing things since the hanging clothing is directly above it. However, it is functional for preventing the items in the drawer from getting caught on the articles of clothing hanging above, allowing the drawer to glide easily. I really liked that the Algot system brackets are easy to adjust and maneuver. If we ever tire of this system or decide we want shelves instead of drawers, it is easy to swap out parts and adjust their placement on the  track system.

On the door of our closet hangs a key rack and a picture frame, fitted with window screen. I made the frame by stapling standard window screen material to the back of the frame, and a decorative ribbon to hang it. These two pieces are perfect for storing necklaces and earrings. Just inside the closet Todd installed a couple hooks so that I could hang belts and my purse.

So there you have it, our itty bitty master bedroom closet. I found the Ikea parts online ahead of time and drew out the plans before making the trip to the store to purchase everything. We completed the entire project in a weekend. We started out Saturday with a trip to Ikea and the hardware store to pick up all the materials and Sunday was spent doing touch up paint to the walls and allowing the shelving paint to dry. We are both hoping this new system will help keep things nice and organized.

Do you have any tips for organizing a small space?