Nursery In A Closet Update #1: The Fabric Goes Up

Last week, I showed you some of the things that would be going into our baby's nursery in a closet. Today, I am going to show you the progress we have made so far!

Here's the to-do list:

• Paint the walls gray
• Hang fish fabric
• Frame fish fabric & touch up paint frame
• Put in crib
• Patch & paint crib-assembly-related holes (it is a TIZZZZIGHT squeeze)
• Put up shelves
• Put up mobile
• Put up frames
• Make the shelves beautiful and efficient!

First, I took down the old closet shelf, patched it up and taped everything off to get ready for Mr. Paint.

Walls turned gray! They were officially the first walls in our house to be painted.

We had a little issue with the paint... I didn't want to buy new paint because we have about 3,000 gallons of paint in our garage. I picked out one of the many shades of gray but there wasn't quite enough. So, Scott painted one and a half of the walls with that one and the other wall with a different gray. One is called Pewter Mug by Behr and the other is called Dolphin by Benjamin Moore. Pewter Mug is the one pictured above. Since time was precious and paint was almost out Scott didn't paint most of the area that would be covered by fabric. And, in about 6 months, it would be covered by clothes.

Then the fish fabric went up! The method I used was the official method of: lots of tiny nails.
First, I ironed it:

Cora got a special treat while all of this was going on. That little lady does not get to watch TV at all, but we decided that she might like to be entertained a bit by Goofy or Curious George while we did some quick hammering. So, Scott got it set up for her and watched a bit while I got the everything ready to go. I am pretty sure that he wanted to watch the cartoons more than she did. Actually, I am positive about that because after 5 minutes or so she gave up on that goofy dog and asked if she could go play in her room.

Before she left, she gave out some important DIY supplies: a crown and some of my old super-huge sunglasses from her toy box in our room.

For the trim that I was going to put up around the edges of the fabric, I drilled a hole about every 12-15" in the trim and hammered nails part-way through. And that is what you see the sunglasses queen doing in the photo above.

Next, I held the fabric on the wall where I wanted it and Scott nailed it in. He would put a nail in the left side while I held it tight and then a nail in the right side while I held it tight. I wasn't too precise about it but I did measure the left side each time to keep it about 12" from the wall since the shelves would be going there.

Then I just folded the extra fabric under and nailed it in. After the sides were in place, we nailed the top. I folded the bottom under and nailed it in so it had a nice clean look.

I had someone at Lowes cut my trim to exactly the right size for my fabric frame. It was already primed white and Scott just added another coat to it before it went up.

Then, up the trim pieces went. It was easy stuff.

Cora came and checked it out:

She approved but she is definitely going to be major jealous when she realizes that new baby gets to sleep in mom and dad's room. She would spend every second in our bed if she could.

A lot of progress was made on this little nursery in a closet over the weekend. So, I hope to be back soon with another update.