Pepper Design Blog

Girls’ Room: Painting Progress! Walls and the Bookshelves

Thank you to Ikea Hackers for picking up Liv’s little kitchen! 

We have made some awesome progress in the girls’ new room (and just in the nick of time, right? please let me not go into labor tomorrow with my hallway full of furniture and toys…) including painting that new built-in bookshelf and the walls. You may have caught a sneak peek of the nursery paint samples or the wallpaper installation over on Instagram, but here are a few more photos to document the nursery transformation.

Kevin sprayed each bookcase using our Graco Magnum (also seen here) for that clean, brush free finish early one evening last week.

An alternative to a sprayer is using a small spongey roller designed just for cabinetry. I’m sure that once the bookcases are installed we’ll go back and make small touch ups using this technique which is a hair more time consuming but great for indoors (and when you don’t want to cover everything in plastic).

To be very honest, I’ve been having a hard time letting go of our current nursery. I’ve been looking forward to doing something special in this room for the new baby – and the girls together – and I love the inspiration board, but when it comes to actually painting the walls it has been a struggle.

So many happy memories in this space! But they are well documented…

Speaking of painting walls, do you ever suffer from paint-sample-paralysis? It’s this terrible problem I have… and I hope I don’t suffer alone. I go from choosing too many paint samples at the store:

To staring at them on the wall for a few days in various lighting…

(New wallpaper sneak peek!)

To very shortly a wall that looks like this because I begin mixing them all together (which is a TERRIBLE idea because the paint stores can really never color match that correctly).

The ultimate decision paralysis.

And then guess what? I end up not choosing any of those options. I finally settled on Hot Springs Stone (by Benjamin Moore) but color matched to mix into an Olympic Elite gallon. That’s a no VOC, paint and primer in one that does a terrific job of keeping coats to a minimum. The below white sprayed primer spots are where we really needed another top coat to help cover a few dark spots form the multiple (!) samples and a patched picture frame.

Looks uncannily similar to the previous paint on the walls when I was sure I was going bright white or a dark, dark griege. But now that the paint is up I couldn’t be happier! It is MUCH better than the previous tan (this one is more rosy/grey rather than yellow) and plays so well with the lighting. Which is a good thing because it’s not getting repainted any time soon.

So now here’s a little dilemma… Kevin and I both love this little tree on the wall so much and we’re trying to figure out a way to keep it. But is it awkward that it is cut off with the new bookcase? (not installed yet, just up for the photo). The owl is sort of peeking out in a cute way, but he also looks like he’s accidentally chopped in half.

We might keep it for a while and see if the tree blends in well with the rest of the space. Maybe it will? Maybe it will look odd… Now I just need to go and trace its branches a little more carefully…

Next up: wallpaper, bookcase installation, a changing table makeover, an upholstered big bed for Liv and so much more… the fun continues!

PS More nursery progress here!

PPS Speaking of nurseries and babies, how cute is this bump? I would like to request that cuteness the next time around.

Nursery Craft: DIY Art Containers

Liv is collecting little art supplies and toys by the bucket full. The big bins that we initially added to her bookcase are great for storing bigger toys, but little cars, wooden blocks, doll clothing and so on is quickly swallowed up – and finding complete toy sets (like Liv’s wooden train) is impossible these days! So we’re working on adding small container storage to the room little by little.

One of the first organizing projects I tackled included Liv’s art supplies in her little reading nook.

Rather than collect colored pencils, markers and paint into one central storage location (as we had previously done for a while), separating out supplies makes it easier to focus on one specific art activity, put that craft away, and then move on to the next. I first attempted this with open buckets but soon everything was mixed together and crazy again. What is it about organized spaces with a home for each little item that is so darn appealing? It makes my world feel right.

When I spotted these clear containers at Michaels I thought that they might work well just for Liv’s art supplies. I love that they’re plastic paint cans .

After bringing them home I discovered that cheap was too good to be true – the tops are impossible to pop off! Just like a real paint can, to open and retrieve anything inside requires some prying from a really strong object (like a screwdriver) which is not ideal for kids. Poor design.

I thought it would be fun to come up with a DIY handle that would help Liv open up the cans whenever she wants to play, and I kind of like that I can press the lids in extra tightly for art supplies that I don’t want her to have easy access to (like real tubes of paint) so that even with a makeshift handle the lid sticks really well.

I thought about gluing little plastic animals or some other little toy to the top of the paint cans and then remembered that we have a very cute wooden Melissa & Doug flower puzzle that has received quite a bit of wear and tear since Liv began assembling and disassembling two years ago.

I love the shapes and use them all of the time as decoration for her floating tree bookshelves so the entire puzzle really doesn’t stay assembled nor is it really used anymore.

I picked out three of the shapes and hot glued them to the top of each of the paint cans.

But after a night of drying quickly found out that even with strong hot glue the wooden shapes popped right off of the lids if the lids were really well planted onto the container. Boo.

Thankfully the puzzle pieces were wooden and not plastic, so plan b was to drive a little tack nail or two into each shape through the bottom of the lid (with my favorite floral desk hammer – perfect size to keep inside). Now the wooden pieces are stuck stuck.

I used three paint spray colors that I thought worked well in Liv’s nursery today, and would also match her new nursery for two.

The colors turned out a bit chalky rather than pretty and polished, I’m actually really disappointed in the consistency of these particular primer + paint in one Valspar paint cans. I picked up a glossy varnish to cover all with at some point in the future that I’m hoping will fix that.

For the paint can itself I wanted just the edge painted out so I carefully taped off all exposed clear areas inside and out. Learned that lesson the hard way with a slightly careless first round of taping. Thanks goodness for Goo Gone.

If spray paint still makes it through onto the clear plastic, Goo Gone to the rescue.

Finished! You can see the chalky consistency if you look closely…

But for now they’re a cute new addition to the nursery.

Love that the colors work well with the artwork hanging above the little table and chairs and with the painted tree and owl on the wall.

Now onto all of the other little toys (like bubble wands and figurines and musical instruments…) that are filling up Liv’s room! Time for a spring cleaning.

PS all Project Nursery posts are sorted right here.

New Nursery: The Wallpaper Has Arrived

Well sort of. The wallpaper samples for the nursery remodel have arrived. I’ve been staring at them for a couple of days now and am trying to imagine how each might look covering an entire 10×15′ ish wall – and I have to be honest – I love them all. I’m pretty sure that any one of these designs would be so perfect in here. Which oh which to choose?

Here they all are up close if it’s hard to see the above at an angle.

Most of these I shared here when I was debating on what direction to take my solo statement wall. Clearly I’m still debating, even when I was sure that ordering my favorites and hanging them up would help settle that nursery quandary!

All of these wallpaper samples are from Spoonflower, an awesome site that lets you design and print your own fabric and wallpaper (oh search thousands of predesigned options by different artists, sort of like Etsy). I’ve used them a ton and they are reasonably priced compared to purchasing something manufactured (though boy does it take a long time to process and ship your order… I have too little patience these days).

I designed the two starry prints (top left, bottom right) which were inspired by this Osborne & Little wallpaper. I spotted the pretty night sky in House Beautiful a while ago and the image sits in the back of my mind. Not happy with any of the colors offered through Osborne & Little, I recreated from scratch and used both a peach (top left) and light pink (bottom right) as the background, while also softening up the stars and playing with the frequency in pattern. The rest of the prints are handmade on Spoonflower by various artists. Clockwise you can find the links here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8.

The pinks are not exact, the fabric examples are still undecided (and will depend largely on the wallpaper) and this is in general a pretty crude photoshop markup, but here’s how I think the bookshelves will work with the space once they’re installed:

Amazing for storage, right? Oh man I can’t wait.

Update: Fabric Warehouse Direct is offering that beautiful Kravet window covering fabric that I photoshopped into the above pic at a steal of a rate right now. 

Ignore the random throw pillows and the other pieces of photo I didn’t get a chance to photoshop out. I’m imagining a dark pink painted backing in those top shelves, hence the awkward block of color at the moment. If you squint you can begin to see it all come together…

Ahhh, it’s all becoming so real!