Nursery reveal
With me being on maternity leave, well I sort of am, it has been quiet on the blog and Youtube channel but thought I do one more post before the baby is due in two days and I will show you what the nursery looks like! The room had quite a makeover, it went from my dumping ground of past builds and out of season clothes to a little woodland themed cabin.
We all have one of those rooms in our houses, the room that get used to put everything in you don't want in your home but you also don't want to throw away. For us it was the little room next to our bedroom, boyfriend always had grand plans of knocking the wall through creating super big bedroom but I never get the point in having a massive suite and rather had an extra guest room. It was also the only room in the house that hadn't had a makeover yet, it still had its awful carpet and floral wallpaper, have a look.
It definitely was the messy room of the otherwise very neat house. My parents were over when I started work on the room so my dad gave me a hand ripping the wallpaper off, painting the walls and pulling up the old carpet. How amazing are the original floor boards that were hiding underneath the beige rug? I would have loved to have kept them but thought it might not be the most baby friendly flooring option so I went with a laminate from Bunnings instead. The colour is almost the same as the real floor! (picture bottom right). I used Valspar's Shetland Sweater on all the walls, it's a lovely fresh white with a tiny hint of grey. The window got replaced as well, as you can see a lot of condensation got through the double glazing seals. By the way can you spot how wonky our house is? The window trim is 5cm higher on one side then the other!
With the brighter walls and new floor it was time to start building and decorating. It is a bit of a tricky room to work with as it's rather small (around 3x3meter) has the slanted ceiling and a weird shape chimney breast but have a look at how the little room looks now!
We know we are having a little girl but if you know me and my blog it will come as no surprise to you that we will do everything sort of gender neutral. The room is a mix of my Scandinavian style and a plywood cabin, you can find a lot of bears and wood in this small space!
A few weeks back I posted the tutorial video of the modular bookcase, an easy build solution for storage in an awkward shaped alcove. The changing table, wardrobe and plywood animals will be tutorials on the Youtube channel but you will have to wait a few weeks for those to go online.
I was looking for a nice woodland themed wallpaper but couldn't find anything I liked so I thought I make my own but of course with a little twist. When I was born my dad made me a set of wooden animals,I still have them and used them as inspiration for my wall. I enlarged the animal shapes and cut them out of plywood. (The tutorial will be online in a few weeks) Perfect wall decor for a woodland themed room! And how cute is my grumpy bear? My mum made me that when I was born, he is called Bolleke and looks rather serious. The little koala was a gift from my sister and is from Maileg. I knitted the pink blanket on mega big needles using 1 kg merino wool roving I bought online, you have this knitted in half an hour, I love big fat needles!!
The new window got some lovely yellow curtains and I made seating pads for my Ikea rocking chair. I had foam cut to size and I then covered the pads with this super cute squirrel fabric from Cloth&Candy. I thought going completely squirrel might have been a bit much so went for a soft grey cotton with little arrows for the seating pad. The bear cushion is from Ferm living, a little Christmas gift from Amara. The little side table is a project from my Made with Salvaged Wood book and I think the bark looks great in this slight cabin themed nursery. On the right shot you can just see a few bears peeking into the camera, they are on a wallhanging my mum made for the nursery. When we were little we had homemade fabric wall hangers in our rooms so thought it might be a nice idea for the little room as well.
The chest of drawers that was in the room got a new look as well, more on that in a future tutorial. Same goes for the wardrobe, it started its life as a display cabinet and a full tutorial video will be online next month. The little baby monster Tshirt is from Zara and the penguin slippers are from John Lewis, there are a lot of animals in this small room! The changing mat was an Amazon find and is from East Coast Nursery.
The bear poster in the bottom right shot (Lisa Jones Studio) was sort of the inspiration for this whole room. I bought it a while ago when I was shooting the Salvaged Wood book and needed some kid like props, I just love this sandwich eating bear! I had him hanging in my studio for a while and when I started thinking of nursery themes I thought bears and woodland cabins could be a great look :) The yellow and white mouse is from Hema and the bunny with his hands nonchalant in his pockets is from Anne Claire Petit. The berber rug was another great find, I spotted it in the window of a local furniture shop I walk past when I'm off to the train station. The shop then started it's closing down sale but unfortunately I always walk pass the shop before and after opening times. Luckily nobody else wanted the rug as on one Saturday I finally made it in and picked up the wool rug for a bargain basement price.
The cute blue dress was made by my mum and my dad made the matching hanger, yeah I come from a very craft family ;) The fitted sheet in the cod is from Snüz and the grey blanket from Ferm Living. The elephant is a little project I'm working on with my friend and illustrator Clare Youngs and will be available in my soon to open website, I'll keep you posted when that will happen.
What do you think? Do you like the transformation? It definitely isn't the messy storage room anymore :) In fact I don't have a junk room anymore, as we hardly have any storage in this house almost all the things that were in the room went to the charity shop or got taken apart for me to up-cycle into a future project.
Keep en eye on my social media to see when the tutorials go online (and when the baby is born!) You can find me on Insta @byhestergrams and Twitter @hestershandmade.
