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December 19, 2008
Make Room for Baby, part 2
This is getting real. Some time yesterday afternoon the butterflies finally hit and it finally sunk in that as of this weekend, I'm going to be a dad. At this point, I feel ready for it, but I know that I really don't have any idea what it's really going to be like. Fortunately, that only scares the crap out of me just a little bit; the excitement part is still winning out. After having the plumber and electrician here this week, I feel pretty good about my list of things to get done. There's not much left on it, and one of the items is writing this right here. So, as I promised, here's a description of where the rest of the nursery came from.
Choosing the baby's room was easy in our place. We had known since we first walked through the open house that the small room in the back of the house was perfect for baby. At the inspection we realized that the room was unheated, a problem we've worked around for the past few years, but that's what we had the electrician take care of here yesterday. We had always described the room as yellow, but with only one window that was usually obscured by the door, it was usually pretty dark. So, we knew that the first thing we wanted to do with this room was paint it real yellow and not the darker mustard color that it was. Fortunately, we liked the first yellow that we selected and it even looked good with one wall left with the old color as an accent. It made the room feel much brighter, but there was still the issue of the door over the window.
Another project we'd talked about for years was replacing the door to that room with a glass-paned door. That project is done now, but the details of how that came about is probably a few blog posts in its own. It was one of those projects where nothing quite went right, most of which was a result of my first blunder - buying a 32" door to fit a 30" frame. Oops. With help from a few friends (thanks!) and much more time that I had planned, it finally was hung and really looks great in the room.
I think that our wall decorations are what I like most about the room. We decided early on that we'd like to have an animals theme in the room. It's a simple idea, easy to execute, and gave us a lot of fun choices. Vinyl decals seem to be The Hot Thing now and I became really interested in a few designs that I saw. When it came time to make a decision, I had a lot of bookmarks in my browser, but not a real idea of what I wanted our decision to be. When we were walking through a home goods store in a fun part of Montreal (I guess that could describe most of the city) we saw a decal that I think Maura and I both immediately agreed would be what we want for our baby's room. Birds on a Wire by ADZif was unfortunately out of stock at the store, but I snapped a picture of it with my iPhone and looked it up as soon as we got home. Fortunately, I was able to find a store that sold it for a very good price in the US and promptly ordered it. A lot of people have commented that the design looks like notes on a music scale, which is just what we thought when we first saw it.
One of the first things I found for our animals theme were these wooden wall hangings from Spot On Square. We like their whimsical design and the opportunity to choose a few that we want and mix things up. We didn't initially agree on which four animals we wanted to buy, but we are both very happy with how our choices look on the wall. The print on the wall beside the animals is from R.E.M.'s show at the Fleet Center in October, 2004. Of course, I was there. I already had this hanging in another room with some other R.E.M. tour posters, but I thought that the colors in this one and the fun design would make it perfect for our son's first R.E.M. poster.
Crib bedding seems to be made out to be the biggest decision a new parent will make before their kid arrives. Of course, we really liked some of the designs from Dwell Studio, but we certainly weren't going to pay $350 for a sheet set for a kid to barf on. We settled on the Circles sheet set by Dwell Studio for Target - more good design, much less money. For a time we had also considered Skip Hop's Mod Dots line, but the price for that was still a bit more than we wanted to pay. We did, however, end up with a pillow and lamp with that pattern. We weren't sure that we wanted the lamp until we picked it up to have a look at it and realized that it was a touch lamp. I loved lamps like that when I was a kid so I had to get one for my own son.
Finally, as I mentioned yesterday, I had to have some music in the room for the boy to listen to, and for me to enjoy when I spend time in there with him. We happened to have an unused iPod nano and my old Logitech 2.1 computer speakers available, so all I had to do was get an Apple Universal Dock and connect everything to that and there we go - instant audio system, complete with little remote control. I made a "Baby" playlist and used that to fill the iPod with any childrens' music we have, as well as lots of other good music that he needs to hear. Maybe at a later time I can detail more of what we're playing for him.
You can check out the rest of the pictures of the nursery on my Flickr page.
Posted by jeradlewis at 7:21 AM | Comments (114)
December 18, 2008
Make Room for Baby, part 1
After about nine months, we're almost there. Our first baby will be here in a few days, so of course we've been frantically preparing for his arrival. There are a lot of things to get ready for a little person to come live with you, but as with many new parents, we've focused a lot on his room. We realized early on that this would be the first room in which we'd have the chance to completely design it from the ground (or rug) up how we want it.
We made a point to empty absolutely everything that wasn't for the baby out of the room, as we really wanted to make this his and not clutter with our stuff. We do enough of that in our other rooms. In the end, only the bookshelf remains in the room now from its previous use as Maura's study. We moved her desk, books, and files into the room I was using as my study and music room. It's a bit more crowded in there now, but we've done a pretty good job of getting rid of extra furniture and items that we really can live without. After a few months, it's completely comfortable and I think having a room just for my little son is absolutely worth it.
One of the first decisions we made was that we didn't want to spend ridiculous amounts of money on baby furniture that wouldn't be useful beyond his toddler years. We were very fortunate that we were able to start off with a crib from Maura's sister. Our niece, who is almost three years old now, just moved to a small bed so the timing for them getting rid of their crib was perfect. Its white paint fit perfectly with what we were thinking for the room, so we it turned out to be a good start to our baby furniture collection.
I spent a few weeks scouring baby furniture websites trying to find just the perfect dresser and/or changing table. We decided that we wanted to get a dresser with a changing top that could be easily used as just a dresser after he's done with the diapers. While some of the Italian pieces were quite enticing, we just didn't want to spend >$1k on a baby piece. I had spent a bit of time looking at the Ikea catalog, as well, but hadn't found anything that I really liked in their room layouts and pictures. Still, that didn't keep me from wanting to go to the store in Stoughton to check out what they might have. Fortunately, in the kids' section we saw a setup that we immediately realized would work perfectly for us. They had on display two small Aneboda chests side-by-side with a taller wardrobe beside it. At just about 30" wide, the two low dressers were the perfect size for a changing pad and at less than $200 for all three pieces we knew that we'd found what we wanted. At first we thought that the dressers might be too low and that I should build a changing top on which we could raise the pad. After a while (or after my other projects took all of my time), we realized that the height was probably good as it is and that we didn't need anything else to add to the furniture.
The last piece of furniture that we wanted, or had room for, was a rocking chair. We've heard from everywhere how a rocking chair is indispensable for new parents. To put the baby to sleep, just keep rocking and rocking and rocking... As I mentioned, I was very inspired to make this just the room that we wanted it to be and that meant that I couldn't settle for a big, ugly, oversized fiberboard glider that's in every baby store. The only problem was that I wasn't finding anything else that I liked enough that would be as comfortable as the big ugly glider, because damn they are comfy. After a couple weeks of searching I found this post on daddytypes.com and immediately fell in love with the Eames rocker. I knew I had to have one. But again I wasn't going to pay $550 at DWR for a new one, so it was off to eBay. I discovered there that they made them with fabric cushioned covers and zeroed in on one that I HAD to have. I was sure that this was the one, but I was going to have to follow the last few minutes of bidding on it on my phone in a locker room before my volleyball game. I watched the price rise in the final few minutes, but I thought that it would still be mine, but with about 15 seconds left I was outbid and it was finally pushed out of my price range.
I spent the next two weeks bidding on any cushioned Eames rockers with no luck. In the end, it couldn't have worked out better that I lost those auctions as I found a blue polypropylene (no cushion) one on Craigslist. Maura and I went to have a look at it and were very pleasantly surprised at what we found. We brought along a pillow that matched our color scheme in the room and as we walked in the front door of the sellers' house in the South End, they said, "The chair will match that; we have the same pattern in our kid's room." We spent about 20 minutes chatting with them before taking the chair home and on the way out Maura said, "I think we just met our nursery design doppelgangers!" Without having sat in one before trying it at their place, we both fell in love with its looks and it's oh so comfortable to sit in. Since it's uncushioned, I thought that we could use a pillow or blanket on the back, but I think that these chairs are best without anything else there. We're happy that now we have a chair that will hopefully serve us well for rocking, nursing, and sitting up in the boy's room, as well as be something that we'll be happy to have for years afterwards.
We have been looking for a good rug to go in the room but I had thought that we probably wouldn't find one before the baby is born. Earlier this week we had started to focus on some Flor designs in red and were just about ready to order some samples that our nursery doppelgangers had recommended. However, yesterday in Crate and Barrel I found a great deal on a soft red ribbed wool rug, so we're going to try that in the room. Unfortunately, we won't be able to get it for a few days, so we'll have to add that to the room after the baby has settled in.
We're both incredibly happy with how the room has turned out. I'm very happy just to sit in there and enjoy the newness and be so happy that this is something we designed ourselves. I plan to follow up, hopefully tomorrow, with another post about the rest of our design choices in the room - paint, bedding, wall decorations, and of course, the subwoofer.
Posted by jeradlewis at 12:03 AM | Comments (6)