Nursery: The paint job

Ok, so let’s just say I’m really really excited about the progress that’s been happening in the baby nursery. It hasn’t been without some setbacks, and it’s far from done… but seeing a little more progress each week is such a rush! Here is the nursery as it has been for the last 2 years, since we bought our home:

A sad cave-like vacancy with startling similarities to my empty womb, I’d say. In your face Endometriosis!

So I got a wild hair up my back-side, and decided to go with a deep rustic mustard yellow in the nursery. And like my good friend Angie, I’m sure you’re mumbling to yourself, “who in their right mind paints a baby girls nursery Mustard Yellow?” Well you’re going to have to trust me on this one. Cause today we’re not getting much past the mustard paint.

Instead of our traditional trip to Walmart for paint, we impulsively picked up some paint at Lowes whilst in Ames for an OB appointment. The impulsiveness carried over into the purchase of weird Olympic no-VOC paint that we bought. (MISTAKE #1) Thinking that the extra $ would be worth spending, what with me being knocked up and all, taking paint-fume precaution seemed a priority. And why not give Mother Earth a big wet one while we’re at it!

But once I started slathering this stuff on the wall (complete with my paint mask and open windows) I quickly learned that, not only was it a weird stringy texture, and pretty darn fumey… it had terrible coverage. (though I was still loving the yellow… so there!)

I took lots of breaks.

After two coats, and a completely empty can of fancy “eco-friendly” paint, it was still very blotchy with spots of florescent periwinkle peeking through from it’s previous life. Ew.

THEN, I decided that it was ok! Because I was going to glaze the walls (queue MISTAKE #2), for an old-world sort of weathered look. Truly, I don’t know what I was thinking. It looked like Big Bird vomited on my sweet baby girls’ nursery walls.

It was at this point in the process that I literally had to set down my brush, and walk out of the room. SO distraught. I hated it. And that was when we walked our sorry selves into Walmart, bought an $11 gallon of similar-colored paint, and repainted the entire room (since the rest of the room needed another coat anyway, and because the second can of paint was not an exact match).

Nick was a dear and helped me with this last final coat after work, because I was about to throw the can of paint out the window. And my body hurt like nobody’s business.

And wouldn’t you know it, Walmart’s cheapest lowly Colorplace paint had a great consistency and great coverage. Not to mention low-odor according to my super-sniffer. And I’m not going to lie, I loved the slight difference in color better than the original!

So… the nursery is a creamy shade of honey mustard, but not without some serious blunders along the way.  That’s what I get for trying to be environmentally friendly, and having a dramatic lapse in judgment when it comes to glazing.

It. Looks. Awesome.

Stay tuned for many more “chapters” of our nursery progress! You may be skeptical of the color, but hold onto your panties… This is only the beginning my friends!