Planning Baby Girl's Room

I am currently sitting in our office-soon-to-become-baby's-room at a desk that's in the middle of the room, away from the walls which are half-taped and begging to be painted. And I'm itching to get there. But this 7-month-pregnancy bump and bad back are slowing me down so alas, here I am wondering why I didn't tackle the baby's room any sooner.

Not that I haven't been doing my research. And by research I mean spending hours on Pinterest, finding my inspiration for this room and pretty much mapping out every detail. In so doing, I created a billion projects for myself. Thankfully I have a totally-rad sister who loves doing room makeovers because she's coming to my rescue in a week to spend "as long as it takes" to get this nursery almost done. It also helps that she's bringing me all her baby girl clothes and accessories that her 10-month-old has outgrown.

So I'm planning that 4 weeks from now I will be totally ready for this baby and then just sit in the sun and rest until this baby makes her arrival. Okay so I'm being optimistic.

But that's totally besides the point of this post. When my sister offered to come, she asked me to make a montage that would show what I was thinking for Baby Girl's room so she could get a feel for it too. And thanks to Pinterest, it seemed like I could find a tutorial or at least a picture for everything I pictured in my mind. So here's what I came up with:

I wanted to keep the dominant colors in my room neutral so that next time around, if we're having a boy, I won't have to re-paint or take out furniture. Grey and off-white was the way to go for me. Then I loved the idea of adding pink and green. The green I could use in permanent pieces and I could switch out the pink accents for blue ones if again, we have another boy in the future. I found a good color scheme (that you can see above, although my off-white and grey are not the same colors as shown there).

Picking paint was a one-day nightmare for me. Why did I have to do it in one day? Because Ace Hardware was having an awesome deal on their paint and I found out about it one day before the sale ended. My first sample of grey turned out blue on my walls. Totally not what I was looking for. That's when I realized that I needed a grey with a warm undertone (and with 0 blue in it at all). My carpet is brown and so with a warm undertone, the grey wouldn't look so out of place.

My 2nd sample came out too brown, but I scored with my 3rd and 4th (some of these I got free at Lowe's with a coupon so I wasn't buying a ton of samples really). Either one would have worked, but I ended up going with Bleached Shadow. I bought one can of it in a darker shade and then asked them to mix me another can of the color, but mixed at only 60%. This is the way to do it if you want the same color but lighter. They can mix it at any percentage, you just have to ask!

The dark grey is for some of the furniture, the lighter grey is for the middle part of the wall (the green part in the picture above) and the off-white (I went with Bone White, but ended up mixing a little bit of brown with it because it was too white) will be for furniture and for the borders on top and bottom. The only paint I have left to get now is green for the dresser.

A word about chevron: I love it in small doses. The chevron fabric above is for the baby glider and I will mimic it on the love sign, but that's pretty much it. Which means I also still have another kind of fabric to find for my valance curtain and teething pads on the crib sides (neither of which are pictured above). Decisions, decisions.

In the end, the main theme of this room is: DIY cheap but cute. I'm using furniture I already have (with the exception of the dresser that I got from craigslist for $60) and my sister & I are doing/making everything ourselves. The paint is the most expensive part really and thanks to coupons and sales, I've bought that cheaper than usual (and I'm going to have leftover for sure! Anyone interested?). Keeping it frugal is how I balance my crazy-project-redo-everything side with my rational-we-should-not-be-spending-money side. And my husband basically tolerates it all (but I know he'll think it looks good when it's all done).

So in a few weeks I'll hopefully be posting a nursery reveal and praying that it looks just as good as everything pictured above or I totally blew previewing it all. :) I'm so excited to see it all done but tired at the thought of completing it all!