Drawer Knobs

When I was buying the furniture for Eliza's room I wanted to get crystal knobs for her dresser, but worried that it would be too girly if I had a boy (and I was convinced I was having a boy). So I left the stock standard Ikea knobs on the dresser and forgot all about it.

Then whilst killing some time on ebay, I found some crystal knobs for less than $3 each. Bargain.

Aren't they pretty?
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Nursery (with an actual baby)

So in the interest of being honest, I should state that this is after a quick tidy up. Eliza had not long spewed before I took this photo and all her bedding was in the middle of the floor. 

You can just see a baby in the cot there. The quilt my mum made was removed the first day we got home and hasn't been near the cot since. Pretty things aren't always very practical apparently!

 The kitchen stool entered the room when we spent many hours patting Eliza to sleep. We have since given up on the patting, but the stool has stayed. Oh and we have curtains now!

 The quilt became a chair cover though, so it is still in the room. The chair is an old fashioned recliner (circa 1970 in 1970 mission brown velour) that we borrowed from the husbands parents as I found it comfortable to feed in. That lasted for the first few weeks until I found it uncomfortable and it hasn't been removed yet.

On a pretty note, I brought Eliza a new doona thingie in pink and orange as I thought it was cute, and slightly more functional than the other one. Each night I fold it back and it gets used as an extra blanket.

So there you go, that is Eliza's room as it stands now. A little different to what it was two months back, but it is bound to change in the future too.

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The Nursery (pre-baby)

So tonight I realised I never posted the finished nursery all finished. I posted bits and pieces of it, but not the whole thing. Opps.

 The sunscreen blind I brought from eBay. I can't recommend Jodie Blinds enough. They were very reasonably priced for a custom made blind, and the quality is better than the much more expensive blind in our bedroom. I never did get a pre-Eliza photo of the curtains thanks to the local lady who told me my curtains would be installed mid May, well before my baby was due, and then didn't do them til mid June!

Stay tuned for how reality pans out and see what 'Cyclone Eliza' has done to the room.

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Growth Charts - Revisited

I did it, I ordered a growth chart.

Yup, I ordered the very one I blogged about a few weeks back from Single Stone Studios, only I ordered mine in latte and orange.

I was super impressed with how easy it was to install (once I got the right height measurements on the wall), though I was expecting the orange to be a little more orange and less red, but meh, I still like it.
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The Robe to End All Robes

The arrival of carpet meant that the door for the robe could be installed - much to my delight.

Much to my disgust we quickly established my husband was drunk when he made the frame for the robe, as the door frame differed significantly in width at the top to the bottom. Lets just say there was a tantrum, a screwdriver thrown, and a person who vowed never renovate again.

My mood was made slightly worse when the door was planed down which requires me to paint the bastard thing AGAIN! That job is still on the "when I calm down" list.

However, eventually we ended up with this

Which hides all of this (and more)

My mum tells me this is the largest baby robe she has ever seen. Clearly she hasn't seen my plans for our next house *hides*.

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Growth Charts

I have a slight obsession with height at the moment, possibly because the husband is rather tall, and our child is now measuring taller than it should be for its gestation.

And because I find growth charts to be the cutest things ever. As a little kid I always wanted a doorframe that marked my height each birthday, but we moved around a lot, and most landlords don't really care about a 8 year olds height on their doorframe.

I found these ones on etsy which were more than a little bit cute

Giraffes and Stuff

SingleStone Studios

I am thinking of ordering the second one in orange and latte for behind the door in the babies room.

What do you think?
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The brown fluffy stuff

Another installment of the spare (babies) room renovation started way back in mid January. Whilst I was on my summer holidays, I decided to get a price on carpet for the spare room.

An easy enough task, I needed the match the carpet in our bedroom, so the colour and style was settled. I was worried that our carpet would have been discontinued since we renovated our bedroom 16 months ago, but luck was on my side.

Until the lovely people at my carpet company rang to tell me that my carpet was on backorder for the next 6 weeks. Seems I am not the only one who loves my carpet :(

So, after the longest wait of my renovating lifetime, the day finally arrived when it was to be installed, and I left the room looking like this

and my dining room looking like this - so much baby stuff already :S

and I came home to see this lovely sight

Oh how I love my new carpet!

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See the Fizz

So with a colour for the nursery decided, it was time to introduce a lamp. I loved the Fizz from Freedom, though wasn't overly taken with it being white.

So I decided that a coat of paint was in order. I wanted to retain the white look on the inside of the lamp. Bring out the blue painters tape and an hour of cursing myself for wanting to do this task! Curves are hard to tape, that is for sure!

Sure looked pretty when I turned it on though :)

The next morning I broke out the Dulux Enamel spray paint in Vivid Orange, and well, lets just say it lives up to its name ;)

Now all I need is to have the carpet installed so I can set up the bookshelf to place the lamp on!
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How my husband lit up my world

It doesn't take much these days, a few powerpoints, some lights and a fan, and I was his. Well least for the afternoon when it came to climbing up a ladder holding a tape measure.

Oh I do love the sight of a freshly installed Clipsal C2000 Series powerpoint! So white. So shiney. So electrically charged!

I should mention, for record keeping sake, the tanty I threw at one point about my previously much loved plasterer. When he arrived, all those months ago, I asked that he not cut the hole in the ceiling for the fan cables. We hadn't centred the cables, opting to do it after the plaster was up. We had previously found it easier to paint without a hole in the ceiling, and you know, hadn't decide on the location of the fan. I made it perfectly clear that we could get into the cavity of the ceiling, and would be doing so to install the air-con vent, so it wasn't a major thing.

Imagine my suprise when I came home to find a hole in my ceiling. Imagine the tanty I threw when it wasn't centre of the room, rather centre of the window - which wasn't centre of the room!

It wasn't a huge thing, but it meant that now the lights are in a rather odd location, not being square from each wall. Not impressed plasterer, not impressed.
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Ikea, I love you again.

After my outburst at Ikea a few weeks back, I found myself spending a quick half hour in my happy place (it really was quick, I forgot my purse!) and discovered that
a) their website sucks balls and despite not stating the white Hemnes 8 Chest of Drawers is available, it is infact a stocked item!
b) Some smart person at Ikea made a sheet of all the dimensions of the Hemnes range for me to take home and study (of course I found this after I had written it all down on the back of a receipt that was in my pocket).
and finally
c) it is possibly to go into Ikea and leave with no buying anything at all (after having ordered a serve of meatballs I discovered I had left my purse in the car and for once there wasn't six million coins in the bottom of my bag).

Anyway, after wanting this chest of drawers to be used as a change table after some slight modification

and having each and every drawer planned out in great detail, I realise it would leave zero room to walk around and use as a change table. So its smaller little brother it is!

Which isn't a bad thing, just means I need to re-think my storage needs. There is quite a bit of hanging room in the robe, so I am sure I could get some sort of hanging storage device from Ikea, otherwise I can always just buy a wire drawer thing for in the bottom of the cupboard if we needed it.

Anyway, this is what I have plotted for the room

The left side will be the chest of drawers (which will move slightly more out of the picture, the right side will be a bookcase for displaying pretties and baskets of toys. Thank the lord for blue painters tape being multi-purposful!

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Paint, glorious paint!

The husband lost brownie points during the week, but managed to regain them by painting our spare room over the weekend.

The poor floor copped a battering, but thems are the breaks. We didn't bother with dropsheets, as we will carpet the room. So at the moment it looks pretty crappy, but I can live with that.

I am hoping the boy has the motivation to do all the trim this weekend, but we will see how I go with that one. I am looking forward to being able to start decorating though. Little way off yet, but we have a few months up our sleeve ;)
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All the trimmings

It took most of the weekend, however the husband finally completed the architrave and skirtings in our spare room. See, despite having been renovating for the last 6 years, he still hates doing architraves. WITH. A. PASSION.

Being the champion that he is, he completed them with minimal tantrums and dramas.

Of course, being the last room to have architrave fitted means that he has finally got a decent skill level. I was so proud of this particular join as it will require very minimal gooping and sanding by myself!

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