Another test of the phone straight to the blog… Our new pool is short enough that mal can wade around and barely has to pull her shorts up.

We made huge progress on the nursery over the past few days. I was starting to think it would never get done, but it is now (mostly) up and running and functional.

The room started out off-white with stained-wood trim. I pulled all of the trim, doors and baseboards out… sanded them down to bare wood… painted it white and put it back in.

We also got some help a few weeks ago painting a few rooms in the house, including the nursery. Mal and I picked out a yellow color for the top of the room and a khaki color for the bottom.

Mal wanted a chair rail, so I put one in… I’m surprised at how much of a difference it makes with the whole room.

I put the crib together and moved the dresser and chair into place tonight… we’re still waiting on a nightstand/table that we ordered to arrive and I’m also going to build a little bookcase. We’re going to take the next couple of weeks to put some finishing touches on the room and add some more decor. So this isn’t a completed nursery, but just getting this stuff done is a huge weight off of my shoulders. I was starting to get stressed about everything.

Here are some more views of the room…

The general idea for our son’s room involves jungle animals, so there are plenty of stuffed giraffes, elephants, monkeys, etc…

Our bedding is freaking cute. At least I think so…

Night-light…

A guy that works with Mallory’s dad made this rocking horse for us… Quite possibly the coolest rocking horse I have ever seen.

This little chair used to belong to my dad when he was a kid… this teddy bear will keep it warm for now until baby is big enough to sit in it.

We will be adding stuff to the room as we get it ready, so expect more pictures before baby makes his appearance.

You can see all of the photos in the nursery set on my Flickr page…

The new top is all glued/nailed together. I used birch for the top and sides… I don’t know if that matters to anyone, but I felt like sharing. Tomorrow (Thursday) is my day off, and I plan on finishing all of the sanding of the old paint from the rest of the dresser and putting the new side pieces in place.

This is a pretty basic fix for the dresser, but I’m starting to get the bug to do more furniture. I don’t think I can do much more without some more tools, so I’ll probably have to shake the desire to start something else. Maybe I can get into my parents’ basement sometime and see if my router/table is still in working order.

I found a sanding disc that fits into a drill at Lowe’s over the weekend. It is making my life so much easier than trying to get an even finish with the belt sander.

My angle cuts might not be 100% perfect, but I’m pretty impressed with what I did with a circular saw. I’m no Norm, but it’ll do for that corner. Hopefully no one decides to come over and check the back left joint on the underside of the dresser’s top piece…

The old top popped right off, and I just copied all of the cuts onto new lumber… so hopefully it was designed right the first time.

This dresser was nailed to the workbench supports in our garage when we bought the house over the summer. I had kind of written it off and thought about getting rid of it last week but then we decided to try to fix it up and use it in the guest room. It’s not the nicest piece in the world, but it’s free.

It’s going to need a new top, a new drawer, new hardware, new side panels… it obviously has to be sanded and re-painted. At first it sounds like I may as well just build a new dresser, but the piece is pretty solid as a whole, but the sides are made of a simple panel that even I should be able to fix.

These are the “before” shots. I will try to document the progress as it comes along for anyone who cares…