Madeleine's Nursery Makeover

Another classic 70's room, this one soon became our youngest daughter, Madeleine's, nursery. Her room is the smallest bedroom upstairs but the updates made it feel a lot bigger than it was before. It started out covered in some great wallpaper, in fact two different wallpaper patterns, airplanes on two walls and green paper paneling on the other two walls. The addition of green trim and doors really made for an ugly room.  As an added bonus, under that layer of wallpaper was some additional green paint and a lovely pink tulip wallpaper border, just in case the first layer wasn't enough.  The dresser that you see in the picture was left in the basement, along with a bedframe that was painted to match.  I really liked the simple lines of the dresser and it was still in good condition, although ugly, so I decided to refinish it to match the cherry crib we picked out.  Looking back at these before pictures, it's hard to believe it's the same room.

We tried several different methods removing the layers of wallpaper and we had the best luck with a combination of a steamer and a wide putty knife to help scrape the stubborn spots.  If one of us used the steamer and the other closely followed to peel the paper immediately, it came off pretty well.  The border actually took us about the same amount of time to remove as all of the airplane and paneling wall paper because they must have used a much stronger glue.  The airplane wallpaper was pretty heavy and came off in pretty good size pieces.  Thankfully we were able to get it down without too many issues and it didn't leave a lot of damage to the walls.  What spots we did have, we patched with a little spackle, smoothed, and sanded before painting.

While the renovation took a lot of time, it really didn't take a lot of materials - a couple gallons of paint, a new ceiling fan (which we already had from another room in the house), a new organization system to make the closet more functional and some furniture and it has become a great nursery for our little girl.

Luckily, the hardwood floors were in great condition so that was a good starting point for us.  We painted the walls a neutral gray and that really lightened everything up.  Repainting all the trim and doors to white makes such a huge impact.  I made the curtain panel out of some pink damask remnant fabric that I picked up on clearance for $5 by adding a simple hem all the way around and a rod pocket at the top.  

Her bedding is a combination of several different pieces. We went with solid pink crib sheets. A super soft minky baby bumper (which we took out when she was little and used a breathable bumper in it's place due to the risk of soft, fabric bumpers) from Carters.  

The striped crib skirt was a last minute find from the Pottery Barn Kids clearance section, I was originally going to make one but a) I'm not really that good with a sewing machine and b) the fabric required to make the ruffled skirt I wanted was going to cost as much as the ruffled PBK ones that I was trying to avoid buying, so when I found this cute simple one for $14.99, I jumped on the deal, it's from the Sophie collection. 

 The quilt and pillow are from the Pottery Barn Kids Vienna nursery collection. The rocking chair and ottoman are from Babies R' Us and have been discontinued but they do have a lighter grey similar rocker available currently. The grey rug is a solid grey carpet remnant rug that we found at Lowe's I believe. The lamp base and shade are both from Target and the table is from a set of nesting tables that we've had forever that I painted white.

The "M" on the wall is a simple wooden letter that I ordered from Craftcuts - they sell all different sizes and fonts - and then hotglued buttons all over.  It took me until her first birthday party to actually get it decorated, I may have just hung it unfinished on the wall for the entire first year until we threw a "Cute as a Button" birthday party and I borrowed it for decor to hang with on the wall in the kitchen.  I just bought a bag of random sized buttons at Hobby Lobby for around $5 and glued them on in layers.

The shelves were prefinished boards from Lowe's along with brackets sold in the closet/organizing section and all the picture frames are Ribba frames from Ikea.  The elephant painting on canvas I painted at Uptown Art and the elephant print with the balloon is from TrafalgarSquare on Etsy.  All the photos are by Dede Holman Photography.  The large elephant stuffed animal is from Pottery Barn Kids a while back as well.  The mobile is from Ikea, the pink organizing basket on the shelf is from Babies R' Us, and the picture frame and stuffed bear were both gifts so I'm not sure on sources for those.  

The dresser was refinished by stripping and sanding off all the original paint and then we finished it with a natural walnut stain that included poly.  I added a little cherry stain to the walnut to give it a bit more red tone when I was trying to match the crib.  I ended up putting on four coats of stain and it's a pretty good match.  I probably could have done one more but like most projects, I ran out of time and patience.  We added some glass knobs from Lowe's and I think it turned out perfectly.  It's a perfect size for a nursery.  The changing pad cover is from Munchkin at Target.  We added the screw at the back of the dresser to secure the changing pad to the top of the dresser.