Big Boy Room

After much thought, we decided that it probably wasn't the best plan to do another nursery and then have to start doing big boy rooms only slightly down the road.  As you may remember, Charlie's nursery was, and is just about the most awesome nursery that was ever created, ever.  However, as time has marched on, we have found that we were changing the room quite a bit to keep up with a monkey, err toddler.  The room is perfect for a newborn and infant and quite frankly, I didn't want to do another baby room.  Hence, Charlie got to move into a big boy room!

This room was formerly our guest room.  It already was painted grey and already had shelves that I knew that I didn't want to remove.  So with that I decided the color scheme would be grey, lime, green and it would be Charlie's robot room.

The crib is in there just temporarily, so the wall behind it is pretty blank right now.  Once the crib moves out (in a year or so) we'll worry about decorating that wall to match the room.  We also already have a desk that will go in the space that used to be in the guest room and is now in our basement just chillin.

The room was definitely designed on the cheap.  The only things that we bought were:
Cordless Blind
Two Curtain Panels
Orange Fleece Throw for bed
Orange Spray Paint for Lights
Two Vinyl Robot prints that I made and then framed
LED Lights for the vinyl prints (a gift from Grandma Barb)
A couple clearance frames
3 Very clearanced bean bag ottomans from target (less than $10 each--- booyah)

Everything else was stuff that we already had... which was definitely a good thing.

And... ta da!!!! (Pardon crappy cell phone pics, too lazy to pull out the real camera)

There are three light switches for the room:  One for the overhead, one for the orange hanging lights, and one for the backlighting LEDs on the bots (this is what Charlie calls 'em "Bot Bot")

To the left of the shelves we pay tribute to some iconic Bots.  (Do you know how hard it is to find a decent picture of Bender where he isn't drinking or smoking??? Yeesh)

The chair to the left of the window is a chair that my great uncle Art made, and I recovered with fabric that an old coworker gave to me about 3 years ago.

And, because soft back lighting is the number one thing we loved in Charlie's first room--- here we are again.  This time it is a little more isolated in the room, but it is just as kick ass.

Nursery Progress

This weekend was like an episode of Divine Design took over the Tal's.  Only instead of having a crew of people all with extensive knowledge and crazy unlimited budgets, we had the two of us, a few extra bucks and a floor plan that I drew out in sharpie.  But, in the end I think that Candice and especially Chico would be proud of what we accomplished.

While the nursery is far from complete, the hard labor aspects are out of the way.  We still have all of the decorative pieces to put in as well as our staples (crib, rocker, etc).  As you recall, we were inspired by a Dr. Seuss themed nursery that we found online.  While the inspiration was exactly what we were looking for, it was not exactly our style.  We wanted something that could really grow with our Little T through the years.  Without sharing ALL of our secrets, we soon decided that what we really wanted was a simple painted room with a thick border that would literally glow in the room.  The border itself has some secret elements that you will see soon enough.

First things first, our color scheme.  We chose a periwinkle for the walls, white for our border, and lime for an accent color.  I have always loved periwinkle and I think that Little T will be a fan as well.

Matthew got to work right away with the painting.  Unfortunately there was A LOT of prep work that needed to be done in the room due to the previous owner's poor taste level.  Once it was all prepped, up went the wall color! (I am showing you the swatch so you can visualize it a little better, iphone doesn't take the best color pics and I am too lazy to pull out the digital)

Next we went to work on prepping for our border.  This involved me and power tools, and was therefore my favorite part.

After all of the wall cleats were in place and attached to studs (in case Little T is a Little Monkey and ever wants to climb the walls), we were ready to start attaching our lighting.  Yup, you are looking at 96 feet of rope lighting.  The lights have their own wall switch which will make them great for late nights with Little T.

Once the lights were all installed, we covered our support boards with hardboard.  This hides all the messy bits, but allows the light to shine from the top and bottom of the floating border.

We still need to prime and paint the border white, but next to the installation that will be a breeze.  I can't wait to show you how we plan to dress up the border and how it will look with actual furniture!  But for now, I'm pooped.  I think I will go back upstairs and admire our hard work some more.

Oh the places we'll go!

One of the things that I have been most excited about in planning for the arrival of Little T has been setting up the nursery.  For those that have been to our house you know that we don't mess around when it comes decorating.  I am like a well oiled design machine ready to take on whatever comes my way as quickly and cheaply as possible.  

My favorite thing to do when people see our house for the first time is to point out how frugal we were with our decorating budget.  I point to the dining room table ($80 on craigslist) the bamboo shades in the kitchen (hello $5...) and then I usually cap it off with my 24" wall tiles (free free and free).

Do you ever watch Design on a Dime?  Yeah--- that show is awful.  I can't figure out how they can make a $1000 budget look so horrible. I think the finished room usually looks worse than when it started.  If you have a designer, a carpenter and another helper working with $1000 you should be able to do more than build an ugly end table and a lamp that looks like a fire hazard.  Just my two cents.

The one room in our house that has not been touched since we moved in is the future nursery.  I have basically shut the door and haven't even looked into it.  We always knew it would be the nursery so we didn't want to start to decorate only to change our minds later.  

But now the time has come to decide what we want to do for Little T.  Since we aren't finding out whether T is a boy or a girl this presents us with some challenges that might scare others into breaking down at their big ultrasound and taking a peak.  But not us.  Not knowing only makes it more fun to find things that can go team blue or team pink.  

Our initial brainstorms involved stripes, dots, alphabets, animals, zoos and other neutral options.   But then, we found our inspiration picture featured on my favorite baby blog Spearmint Baby.  It is a room that is based on Dr. Seuss.  

Unlike other Seussian inspired rooms this room incorporated all of the Dr Seuss characters and all of the bright and fun colors that we love.  Plus, as an added bonus, how can you deny the educational benefits of using a literary theme for Little T? The inspiration is a little busy for our more clean lined taste, so we have come up with our own twist on Seuss for our little one.  (Seriously, I mocked it all up in photoshop to make sure that I wasn't creating something super ugly)

We haven't started "construction" on our room yet, but you can be sure of three things: 

1. It will be so freaking cute.

2. My quest for decorating deals will definitely be in full force.

3. I am so excited I can barely stand it.