THE BIG NURSERY REVEAL!

On Saturday my parents came over to help us out with a few house projects. Ryan and my dad worked on the heated flooring in the basement bathroom while my mom and I worked on the dreaded radiator box. Now the radiator box was built we just needed to drill a million holes in the extra piece of board we had left over from the first radiator box we had made. (If you don't remember that fiasco check it out here)

Now I will spare you all the details, my mom and I stood outside in the cold (luckily it wasn't too cold) for a good hour drilling holes in the board! BUT in the end it looks great and we didn't have to spend anymore money.

Here it is almost done. Ignore the one big hole in it. Ryan's original plan was to drill less larger holes. But I was afraid our keys and other items would end up being pushed through the large holes and since the box is secured to the wall they would be lost forever. SO I still have to cover that one hole up... but that's a small fix.

Here is the finish radiator box! I love the randomness of the holes!

And with that finished the nursery is now complete!!! Here is my favourite part of the entire room!!! To see how this was made go here and here. And for the tree shelves you can go here.

Look we finally put an owl in the tree. My sister in law made this little owl for our baby shower, in fact there are another 4 of these throughout the room. To secure it we just put a nail in the wall and since the owl is made out of styrofoam the nail is right in its butt... sorry little owl!

Here is the crib with the quilt that was the inspiration for the room.

The crib skirt that I made (this is an old picture). You can see how I made that here.

And this is the quilt that my Oma made for us. Its all hand stitched! I LOVE IT!!!

This is the other side of the room. With the dresser, change table and shelf. You can see all the details that went into these here, here, here, here and here.

Can you see the monkey hanging in the corner from the shelf? I put a super cute strawberry fairy outfit on her, I can't wait until the blueberry is big enough to fit into it! haahaa I'm going to be a funny mom who tortures her daughter in funny outfits!!! haahaa

And the change table, with her shoes for the first month or so.... yes she has a lot of shoes. The boxes under the change table are full of more clothes and shoes and blankets as I ran out of storage space!!!

Its all ready to go, now just 9 weeks (or sooner) until our daughter can enjoy this room as well! I am SO happy with how this room turned out.

Now I haven't been keeping track of costs but I can estimate it.

* Change table - already owned, gave it a coat of paint (already had on hand)

* Dresser - already owned

* Crib - gift from my parents

* Wall Paint and primer (CIL paint) - $40

* Tree Paint (CIL paint, small can) - $15

* Material for Wall Decals (leaves, animals) $10

* Rocking Chair - $30

* Material and foam to recover rocking chair - $20

* Shelf - $10

* Decorative Shelf Stands - Free from my brother and sister in law

* Curtain - $20

* Boxes on shelves and under dresser - $45

* Crib Skirt material - $10

For a grand total of $200!! Not too bad at all!!! Thank you to my parents for the crib and to everyone who helped out with the room! Its very appreciated!!! Now we just wait to see what the blueberry thinks of her super awesome room!!

The Dreaded Radiator Box

I may have been a little bit niave when I told Ryan that I was going to make a radiator box one day and that I could do it all myself. I am very handy and have done everything from drywalling to painting to installing flooring. So something as simple as a radiator box in my mind should have only taken a few hours. HAHAHAHAH I wish!!! It was a snowy Saturday and Ryan and I set out to Home Depot to find a sheet of lazer cutout metal for the front of the radiator box (so the heat comes out). We were sadly disappointed to find that they don't make them anymore because they bent too easily and were then unsellable. (I would have bought a bent one!!). Off we went to Canadian Tire and Lowes to find the same problem. BUT I would like to announce that although none of the stores had what we were looking ALL of their shelves were made of what we wanted... at Canadian Tire we asked if we could buy their display shelves.... they just laughed at us! Finally we went to the Rona at Royal York and Dundas where we found what we were looking for... however it was $40/sheet and we needed 2 sheets.... This was the first set back. So we changed our design and got a large square sheet of hole filled thick cardboard type wood. (yes that is my technical term for it....) All happy that we had finally found something we went to go put it in the Matrix to find that its too wide. Now we have managed to never have a problem packing the car full of our purchases... sometimes being so crammed in the car there is no room for me! But we have never not been able to fit everything. Ryan looks at me, throws it on the roof and decides we will stick our hands out the window and hold in place while driving. Well it is -10 outside without driving.... needless to say it was a LONG drive home (15 minutes is a long time with your hand out the window). Then we get home to find that the board is wide... but not wide enough. I had even measured the radiator before we left but in all of the frustration of not finding what we were looking for I forgot to measure before bringing the board home! It was NOT going back though... so we made do. This was only problem #1. Next problem... the radiator is so close to the toilet we have just enough room to make the radiator box. Problem #3... our floors are not even so everything is always slightly crooked and takes double the time to do because you have to measure every angle! Ryan and I go outside and cut all of our pieces. We cut the side pieces and the top piece and attached them with glue and nails and put angled pieces in the corner to keep it square. Now for problem #4, since the hole-filled from piece wasn't one large piece and was 3 pieces we had no idea how to attach it to the front and since we didn't have room to do middle posts to attach it too we had to sit back and stare at it for awhile. Finally after much thought we took some left over trim and glued and bolted the front pieces together to make one large front piece. And then glued and nailed (using the nail gun) it to the front. For a finishing touch we used quarter-round along the edges to make it look nice.

What I learned from this project was to measure before you attempt to fit things into the car AND that things that seem simple may just be a real pain in the butt!!!

But after all of the problems we had it looks fantastic and covers up the rusting and peeling radiator in the bathroom!