Nursery Progress

Over spring break, Steve and I started tackling the nursery.  Since we decided we'd like the room to be neutral so it could easily grow with Mr. Baby, we went with a light grey paint (Gray Owl by Benjamin Moore) and rolled the ceiling with the same light blue that's in our master bedroom (Rising Tide by Valspar).  We had both paints mixed at Sherwin Williams in their Harmony line, which offers the great benefit to a pregnant lady of being no-VOC.  It took two days to get two coats of paint on each wall and the ceiling.  We left the longest wall unpainted, since we planned to tackle our stripes there.  But before we could do our stripes, we needed to install the crown molding so we'd be able to measure accurately enough to ensure our stripes wouldn't look uneven or turn out to be different widths.

We chose the same crown that we had used in the master bedroom to keep things unified.  And although we are more skilled DIY-ers than we were when we moved into this house almost three years ago (!!), we still opted to use pre-fab "cheater" corners rather than mitering our own... partly because we wanted to keep things looking unified from room to room and our master bedroom's crown also has "cheater" corners, and partly because we are lazy (just tellin' it like it is).

 Pre-fab mitered corners from Lowe's. {via}

Once the crown was installed, I caulked it along the wall where the stripes would go.  Our wall ended up being almost exactly 90" from the base molding to the crown, so we opted to make nice wide 15" stripes across the wall.  Starting at the crown, I measured 15" down and penciled a line on the wall, repeated this every 2 feet or so, and then used Steve's long level to connect the dots so I could be sure my line was level once I taped it off.  I simply repeated that process all the way down the wall until everything was taped off, and then it was time to paint!

Yay math!  Please excuse the pile of junk in the middle of the room.

I ended up using a brush on this whole wall for fear of drips and leaking under the tape.  Frog Tape is amazing stuff and my product of choice when taping off for paint jobs, but I had never tried taping off a straight line in the middle of a textured wall, so I expected a little paint to seep under the tape in spots.  I did three coats of the Grey Owl before re-taping for the white stripes and starting in with three coats Glidden's no-VOC formula in off-the-shelf white.  And when I peeled the tape off, I was ecstatic with the results.

Yipes, stripes!

The stripes looked sharp and lent interest but didn't seem to overpower the room.  The crown did a nice job of making the tone of the blue on the ceiling and the grey on the walls a little more differentiated, but still subtle (which we were aiming for).

Hurrah for crown molding!

Now that the body of the room is painted, we've got a few last bits to check off the list before we can say we're completely done painting this room and can start decorating:

• Touch up the few spots around the stripes where some paint seeped under the tape
• Caulk the rest of the crown molding in the room
• Paint all of the caulk white in a semi-gloss finish
• Sponge-paint clouds onto the ceiling
• Paint the interior of the closet (might take us a while since we're still trying to empty that closet out)
• Replace all of the outlet covers and the switch plate

Overall, the room is starting to feel soft and a little whimsical without being girly, and I am really excited to wrap up the painting end of things so we can start setting up the crib and decorating!