Pottery Barn Kids glider wannabe

When we first started planning the nursery, I knew I wanted to get a fully upholstered glider that we could one day use in another room of our house.  Unfortunately, the only place I found that had what I was looking for was Pottery Barn Kids.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love all things Pottery Barn, but I simply couldn't convince Drew Babe that nearly $1000 for a nursery chair was definitely in our budget.

Thankfully Pinterest and Ikea came to my rescue.  We saw other people had turned Ikea chairs into a rocker/glider and thought we would give it a try.

If we had an unlimited supply of funds, I simply would have purchased this chair from PB.

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But we don't, so we picked up this chair during one of our yearly Ikea visits.  (I know a lot of people have used the Jennylund chair for a project like this, but we liked how the Ektorp felt more roomy and comfortable.)

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Some of you may be thinking white is a risky color for a piece of furniture, but the fantastic thing is I can always wash it or simply buy a new one if it starts looking dingy.  I also used Scotchguard on the entire slipcover to hopefully somewhat protect it from spills, spit-up, blow-outs, etc.

I tried to show Drew Babe some of my pins on how people turned their Ikea chair into a rocker/glider.  His wheels immediately started turning, and he figured out how he was going to do this project without following a tutorial.

We purchased the rocker mechanism off Amazon.  I believe the only other things Drew needed for this project was a piece of plywood, some 2x4s, and a few screws.  We kept the legs off of the chair, and Drew screwed in a piece of plywood for the rocking mechanism to rest on.

Because we wanted it to be a tad higher and not have the slipcover skirt dragging on the floor, Drew added 2x4s.  The rocker mechanism was then installed.

Now, for a fraction of the cost, we have our own fully upholstered nursery glider.

Here is just a little comparison for you:

Pottery Barn glider:
$849 (on sale)
+$80 delivery surcharge
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Total $929

Our Ikea chair turned glider:
$249 chair and slipcover
+$49.99 rocker mechanism
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Total $298.99

(Drew already had the wood and hardware in the garage, so that wasn't an extra expense for this project)

Our nursery chair has already gotten lots of use, and is very comfy and sturdy.  The nursery is definitely coming along.

• re-paint all trim
• paint the stripes
• paint bedroom door and closet doors
• install new outlets and covers
• put together furniture (we will have the crib complete tomorrow)
• install blinds
• install curtain rods and hang curtains
• add some artwork to the walls
• re-do the entire closet
• decorate and organize

Another check in the box

I hope by the time we are finished with "project nursery" you will not be completely bored of it.  There have just been a lot of little steps to complete and we are steadily working at each one.  This week Drew completed all of the electrical work in the room.  This included replacing all of the yellowish outlets and outlet covers with crisp white ones, and installing a new light fixture for our little boy.

I had been looking for a ceiling light fixture for a while and, of course, everything I liked was over $100 - way more than we wanted to spend.  During one random trip into Lowe's, I decided to check out the light section and spotted this guy on clearance for $35! (marked down from $90).

I love it, and I think Jaxson will too.  Drew says the circles on the side look like baseballs, so that makes it perfect for a little boy's room.  I went with a semi-flushmount light.  It hangs down a bit from the ceiling, but we won't have to worry about hitting our head on it every time we go in the room.

Drew Babe also replaced all the outlets and outlet cover.

Much more crisp and clean, as opposed to the dingy bisque colored ones.

After a bit of cleaning, the room now looks like this.

Our next steps are the blinds and curtains rods.  I discovered a very unique curtain rod idea on Pinterest, so I am very eager to see how it turns out. Putting together the furniture might even happen this weekend too.

• re-paint all trim
• paint the stripes
• paint bedroom door and closet doors
• install new outlets and covers
• put together the furniture
• install blinds
• install curtain rods and hang curtains
• add some artwork to the walls
• re-do entire closet
• decorate and organize

We have the stripes

That title almost makes it sound like we caught a case of something bad, but actually this is a good thing- a really good thing.  Slowly but surely we are making more progress in our little boy's nursery, and this is something I am particularly excited about.  

This past weekend, in lieu of our regular date-night-out, we picked up our favorite YNot pizza and had a stripe painting "date" at home.  We decided to paint some horizontal stripes on the crib wall, as an accent.  Instead of choosing on just one color for the stripes, we decided on three colors for a little different look.  Picking the colors was one of the most challenging parts, because we still wanted them to somewhat coordinate with the others.  

In our original rendering of the accent wall, Drew made sure that I wasn't planning on using purple in our son's room.  I assured him I was not, and that was the only crayon color choice that I could find at the time.

We changed the stripe placement after measuring everything out on the wall.  The final colors we went with were all satin finish from Benjamin Moore: Vermont Slate, Blue Stream, and Water's Edge.  Since we were only doing stripes on one wall, I was able to just buy the sample size paints.

I put Drew Babe in charge of the measuring and leveling of the stripes, because I know he is much more of a perfectionist than I am.  I do like things to look perfect, but some things I don't bother to take the time.  Thankfully I married someone who will do everything possible to make sure something is straight/level/etc.

 

The Frog Tape held up to its standards and prevented any bleeding, even on our textured wall.

The two colors here are the dark Vermont Slate and the Water's Edge.

After each stripe was complete, we got more and more excited to see the finished product.  The top and bottom stripes had us laughing hysterically while we were painting them.  They seemed to be the same exact color as the rest of the walls, when it was supposed to be a shade darker.  Thankfully after it dried, it was in fact darker than the rest of the walls.

Here is where the room started:

And here it is today:

I think we have officially finished all of the painting portion of the nursery.  There is still much to do, but we are making progress.

• re-paint all trim
• paint the stripes
• paint bedroom door and closet doors
• install new outlets and covers
• put together the furniture
• install blinds
• install curtain rods and hang curtains
• add some artwork to the walls
• re-do entire closet
• decorate and organize (the fun part!)

Progress in the nursery

Finally!!  We have finally started in Baby Jaxson's room!  Mimi and Pops (my parents) graciously offered part of their Saturday to help paint the main color in the nursery.  With four of us working in the room and the walls only requiring one coat, we were finished in less than two hours.  That is my kind of house project!  I just wish everything was that easy.

Here are some "before" shots of the nursery with the blah tan walls.  We only taped the windows, because we are planning to repaint all of the white trim.

 And here are some "during" shots with all the wonderful painters.

And finally the "after."  We went with a satin finish Benjamin Moore color called Blue Haze.  I love how it looks with the white trim and dark floors.

You can see where we are testing out some other blue colors.  We are going to eventually add stripes on this wall.

It has been a huge relief to have the main color finished, but there is still much to do.

• re-paint all trim
• paint the stripes
• paint bedroom door and closet doors
• install new outlet covers
• put together the furniture
• install curtain rods and hang curtains
• add some artwork to the walls