The Nursery...A Work in Progress

OK, Noddys room is still a work in progress and not yet completely finished. But I thought I would share with you what we have done so far. Darren and I are not the most handy boys when it comes to home DIY jobs. Give us a paint swatch and some fabric though and LOOK OUT!

So the plans we had for the nursery were always going to involve a little DIY much to our dismay...but I think we have done well so far. The photo to the left is what Noddy's new room (once our study) looked like just over a week ago. Floor to ceiling gingham wallpaper, a very large bookcase, desk, filing cabinets and all of our Christmas supplies in the built in wardrobe made for one busy study. This room overlooks a side veranda on our home and has lovely filtered light throughout the day it will make a beautiful nursery for little Noddy.



Our first step involved wallpaper removal - urgh!
Both Darren and I are wallpaper mad, almost every room in the house has been glued and papered. This is the first time either of us had attempted removing paper. The study had a lovely English vinyl paper that ended up coming away in two parts. The green outer was removed in part first and then we had to steam the backing paper and scrape to remove it, what an effort! The wall was so sticky from the wallpaper paste, but I am pleased to say that it was easier to remove than either one of us had anticipated. We spent a good day steaming the walls and then washing them three times over to try and remove the excess glue from the wall.



So now, walls are free from wallpaper and washed ready to be painted. We spent the next couple of days undercoating the walls with some fantastical, wonderful, expensive undercoat that the salesperson at Bunnings said one simply had to use on walls that had previously been wallpapered if you don't want your finished wall to have a mother of pearl finish. The walls were given two coats of undercoat paint by our resident Matisse and then it was onto the next task at hand, preparing for the stripe. Originally we were headed for a circus theme and wanted a candy stripe on the walls. A thin stripe of white, red, green etc and then continuing in the same method but that idea went out the window as too tricky. Blame it on sympathy baby brain! We even spent some time trying to find a striped wallpaper as it is much easier to paper than to tape a wall and then paint a stripe! Even with industry contacts we couldn't find a paper that we liked and colour matching is also a bit hit and miss so we opted for a painted finish instead. Darren did the undercoating of the walls whilst his mum, Lynnie and I prepared the timber railing for the bottom half of the walls. I even used a drop saw (is that what it's called)???
















The taping of the walls to measure the stripe took us close to three days to complete! We were both so chuffed when we started, we had a glass of wine in one hand, tape measure in the other and away we went.

"Isn't this easy" says Darren
" We're so handy" say I

....Ha! We had finished one wall and I, oblivious to any mathematical error singing along to the Carpenters was rudely interrupted by Darren telling me we had to start again. Why? Because we hadn't calculated the width of the tape when taking measurements for the white stripe between each of the green stripes. So, that was that. We gave up and took a fresh approach the following night, minus the wine.






This was probably the most arduous task so far in 'Operation Nursery'. Once this was done and we double checked our measurements we began the exciting task of painting the walls with our chosen colour. We were lucky enough to be kept in check by one of the two resident feline site managers, Billy, who ensures there was no slacking off on our part! We then had to get our hard hats back on to install the timber panelling that we wanted below the green stripe. And then this too, had to be painted and painted and painted! We also extended our handyman skills to assembling the cot we bought back in November.



We still have lots to do but at least you can start to see the nursery coming together. The timber rail above the panelling needs to be painted and we need to change the light fixture as it is far too low now. We still need to paint some timber furniture too and buy linen. We have a cot and mattress but no linen! But these are things that will happen over the coming weeks before we head back to India. At least we have a nursery that is 90% complete and ready for the newest member of our family. Tell us what you think