grace's nursery

The room of endless DIY's and love is complete! I'm so excited to have finished this little space. Just like the big kids' shared room, the whole idea behind the abode was to make it gender neutral. I wanted both rooms to be interchangeable between Carter, Kota and baby Grace - who knows when big brother Carter will demand to have his own area to grow up in and likewise with the girls (they may request a shared room at any point!). The last thing I wanted was a design nightmare if Carter gets sick of sharing with his little sister and would have to move into the smaller of the two rooms: this one, the one that was previously painted BRIGHT PINK!

Anyway, there were so many DIY aspects here - from the horizontal striped paint to bring the place back from the intense pink we had painted when we first moved in in October of 2014 (my thought then was that every little girl needed a pink room at one point in her life. It's an American must-have!), to the amazingly large dresser I refinished, to that amaze-balls sphere chandelier, all the way down to refinishing that humongous, furniture-for-giants, Craigslist purchased, old school, rock star of a rocking chair. I'll of course document what we did on each of those points, but for right now I'm just stoked to have finished it up! Wooooo! 

Like I said, DIY's in here will be documented, but I have to say the one I'm most proud of is this sphere hanging light! OH EM GEE.

big kids' room: sad green to DIY makeover

This project is an all time favorite of mine because not only did it come out BOSS, but it totally got our mojo flowin' for several other DIY's - you know, confidence is a big deal when moving forward with decorating your home DIY style. It's huge!

So when we first moved in, I thought I'd be a cool mom and let Carter PICK the color he wanted to paint his room - just a 4 year old boy getting to PICK HIS OWN WALL COLOR. Great idea, Nicole! Anyway, he chose the greeniest green on planet earth which made HIM super happy, but not so much mama (especially because his room is visible from the main living area!!!! Cute mommy/son moment but...).

farmhouse kitchen table turned headboard

So... when Chad and I were were planning out how we were going to actually LIVE in our sweet little home, the first thing on our minds was that we SO didn't need the dumb formal living room - I mean, who did we think we were? Grown ups or something? People who would say words like, "No-no kids! Out of this room - don't touch ANYTHING!" So not us. Instead of such ridiculousness, we decided to make what would have been the formal living room into a "formal" dining space - having a place to eat with family and friends sounded a lot cooler to us than the alternative.

Thus brought us to our IKEA hack farmhouse table DIY taken from this tutorial. Here she is in December of 2014, albeit under horrific photography...

...But then... I kind of wanted a separate living space in addition to our very-much-used family room as the months went on. That room was originally built for humans to hang out in on a regular basis! At most we would eat with our family and friends 1 time per week - the other days that room was just an empty box with a large farmhouse table in it. Totally unusable. Also, I wanted a place to hang out without the kids when we DID have people over.

entertainment center project phase 2 - shiplap!

Shiplapping this gloriousness was phase 2 in our "entertainment center/fireplace/mantle" area project since 2014. We originally freshened up the old, very depressing oak to a pretty white in tandem with our extensive kitchen project, but I was never quite satisfied. The whole area just seemed so busy to me - it wasn't bad by any means, but it just wasn't relaxing to the eye, ya know?

So here was the area from the very beginning (for us) in October of 2014 when we closed on the ol' home (built in 1995 - not exactly old!) and right after the original paint job:

*HORRIFIC photography - if you could call it that ;)