As Ready as We're Gonna Be - The Nursery is Finished

Yesterday, with two days to spare before her due date, I finally finished the nursery. We started kind of getting some ducks in a row for the nursery around this time last year after I found my color inspiration on Pinterest (below). I really loved the navy wall but really wanted a coral crib to put against it.

The Animal Print Shop Nursery Project

We had received a hand-me-down crib from one of our generous neighbors and were really excited to repaint it BUT, we effed up somewhere and ended up kind of ruining it... so, we went to IKEA and I was newly inspired by the kind of retro yet kind of modern SNIGLAR crib. We bought it, and Jamie put it together, and there it sat in our messy office/nursery-to-be for about another 10 months.

Then I spent months trying to find a changing table I liked. Most everything in my price range was dark, glossy wood which was not at all my style. Finally, after months of searching, I found the homie below on Craigslist for 50 bucks. It was then that I decided I'd pop my chalk paint cherry and get my DIY on. 

I don't know what brand furniture that is... & Renaissance Chalk Paint in Aegean Coral

Fast forward through digging out the office, finally painting the wall with the paint we purchased last spring, we finally have a nursery! I'm no interior designer, so I'm not even sure what words to use to describe the look I ended up with, but I'm happy with it. I like the mix of the geometric pieces like the mobile and the lamp with the more retro-inspired glider and changing table. 

Now we must impatiently wait for baby's arrival! (Yes, her name is plastered all over the nursery, but no, I'm not "announcing" it yet on the internet... though everyone pretty much already knows her name.) She'll be here any day now. Birthmother will be 40 weeks tomorrow. I'm taking her in for an ultrasound so that the doc can decide whether to continue waiting, induce, or if Baby is massive, schedule a c-section. I'm looking forward to seeing her on the screen again!

If ya wanna know where we got this stuff: (none of these are affiliate links-- I'm not that savvy)

SNIGLAR Crib: IKEA
Changing Dresser: Craiglist
Renaissance Chalk Paint: Amazon
Wall Paint: Glidden America's Cup Navy
Brightech Bijou Tripod Lamp: Amazon
Mobile: Lavender Kay Design - Etsy
Coral Frames: BYARUM - IKEA (painted with chalk paint!)
Some Things Take Time print: Congo Studio - Etsy
Hands Charcoal Drawing: My talented husband in high school art class
Little Castle Savvy Glider & Ottoman: Buy Buy Baby (not available online ANYWHERE that I can find)
Shaggy Rug: AmazonFaux Fur: Homegoods
Glider Pillow: Homegoods

Build Your Own Crate Furniture in Two Easy Steps

Like everyone else who has spent hours upon hours looking at home decor on Pinterest, I pinned about 800 crate or pallet DIYs. The below image was the one that stuck in my brain, though. I can't seem to find that it's an actual DIY anywhere on the internet; I think it's just linked up to spam mostly, so I don't feel bad for not crediting the image. But anyway, I loved it.

After glancing at a few other tutorials, however, I decided that I could probably pull off something similar. Jamie and I had been having trouble finding a media console that we both liked and was narrow enough for the low-profile look we were going for, so ta-da, let's make one!

Back in May, my mom's trip out to visit just happened to coincide with our finally moving into our new house. Being the crafty birch that she is, I knew she'd be down for helping me figure out how to execute the project. 

Step 1: Get yer shit and figure out how to put it together.

First thing's first, we needed crates. I found 'em at Michael's for about 14 bucks each and bought 8. I felt like maybe I could have searched really hard on the internet and found a better deal, but I'm impulsive and I wanted to this like, right now. 

Now that we had our crates, we had to figure out how to fasten them together. They're all a little irregular, so they're not at all stable when stacked up. They needed reinforcement. After brainstorming a few different methods of bracing, we settled on using three 1x4 boards that we screwed on the back.

I'm getting ahead of myself. First we had to sand the shit out of these 8 crates. For as not-cheap as they are, they sure are shittily made. We sanded for what seemed like forever and they still have more rough spots than not, but we at least reduced the splinter risk by about 85%, so that was good enough. 

(The only issue I have with the rough texture now is that it's pretty impossible to wipe down when it's dusty without completely ruining my rag and getting fuzz stuck everywhere. So I'm open to cleaning suggestions.)

Okay, so now we build.

Step 2: Put it together.

We arranged the crates upright until we were happy with how they kind of fit together. Remember, they're irregular so this is a challenge. Then we laid them face down in that order and grabbed our first board to brace to sit across the center of the back to connect all eight crates. We pre-drilled the holes, then screwed the brace to the back of the crates. We did this two more times so that we had three braces on the back: top, middle, and bottom.

Then, once that was done, we finally found our orbital sander and spent even more time sanding.

Then we spent about 4 hours staining this shiz. Two of us, with even a little bit of help from Jamie for probably 20 minutes. FOUR HOURS. It could have gone faster if Jamie helped more, but to his credit, while we were doing this he was unloading our POD the whole time, so he was excused.

(For anyone curious, we used Varathane in Kona.)

Here's what we ended up with for about $200 and a coupla back aches:

It was pretty empty for a bit while we were still unpacking, but after finding my box full of framed photos, digging out some of our unimpressive book collection, and a trip to the thrift store, I'm pretty happy with how it looks so far.

Framed vintage sheet music from the thrift store on the left, goofy dramatic weddin' photo on the right.
Li'l suitcase which holds miscellaneous junk and red wicker box which holds 3D glasses for our TV: HomeGoods.
The sticker on the bottom of that blue candlestick tells me that I paid $10 for it at Big Lots. I must have been on drugs.

Vintage books hold up our cable box so that the cords fit through the crate crack.

It was a lot of work. I definitely wouldn't have actually done it had my ma not been down for the crafty adventure, so many thanks to her for helping me out. We get tons of compliments on it, so it was totally worth it.

Have you guys hopped on the crate/pallet trend?

In Transition

This photo is unrelated.

Life has been pretty crazy around these parts for the past few months. I have so much to catch you up on, I just have yet to make the time for it.

Up until Halloween, I spent the majority of my time DIYing and decorating for my combination 30th birthday and Halloween party. I called it Thirtyween. It was a lot of fun. Half the fun, honestly, was making all of the decorations. The house looked great. I really meant to post the photos here, but that all kind of fell by the wayside when we discovered another leak in our house. Not counting our house flood, this has been our third leak this year.

It was a pinhole leak in the living room, and in order to clean it up, the room had to be emptied and our brand new laminate flooring had to be torn out. Between that and a mandatory re-pipe of our condo, our living room has been out of commission for 18 days.

We've been considering getting out of our rental and buying a home since our flood back in April. This last leak was kind of the push that we needed to really get moving on the home hunt. Long story short, we bought a new home!

A home so new, it's still only bones.

It's a fantastic end-unit condo in a brand new master-planned community next to the one in which we currently reside. We won't be able to move in until March or April, but we do get to choose everything that goes in it. (So yes, I'm pinning away. Check out and follow my New Home board where you can also see photos of the model!)

We had our first appointment with the design center yesterday to confirm our first phase of options like lighting and appliances. In a month, we'll choose our counter tops and backsplash, so it was fun getting to look at samples to kind of put together some ideas and get some pricing.

Counters, backsplash, and flooring, oh my!

Well, it was fun for me. I think Jamie was only seeing the dollar signs, but we'll make it work. In the end, after our options and upgrades, we still project our final pricing to be about 40k less than the two homes that we almost purchased in our own community. I'd say that's a pretty good deal given that we're getting everything that we want out of it.

While we're mentioning money, I'm going to be earning more of it! My current position is only part time and the hours have been minimal and unsteady lately, so I went on the hunt.

After meeting with a recruiter that did nothing more than spam my references, I applied to two positions on my own. I heard back from one and scheduled a phone interview for the next morning, which was this past Thursday. The phone interview went well, so I went in that afternoon for a second interview. The manager whom I was supposed to meet with got stuck in a meeting, so I interviewed with the girl who would be my supervisor in the position. It seemed to go really well, but I was met with the always frustrating mention of other applicants and the "we'll be in touch". (I just had to hope really hard that the other applicants would bomb their interviews.)

Overall, I felt really good about my interviews and did my best to be patient. Normally one to ignore phone calls from unknown numbers, I did answer every call this weekend, but they were either other recruiters or people calling about the work going on in our house.

This afternoon, after rushing back home from acupuncture in anticipation of a house inspection for the repipe, I answered a call that I thought would be the inspector. It wasn't. It was the manager following up on the interview he missed out on. He asked a few questions, one or two being repeats from my second interview, explained a few things, then offered me the job! I start on Wednesday at an office with a really laid-back atmosphere where I can wear flip-flops and join in on lunch-time yoga a few times a week.

So yes, our life is in a major transition right now. With my new work schedule, I don't expect to be able to get back to any type of consistent or regular posting here, but I'll try when I can.