Nursery Progress

When Benjamin was born at 35 weeks, I had done NOTHING in his room. Since I'd had to be on bedrest for the 5 weeks before his birth, fixing up the nursery was at the bottom of my list. I had a dresser/changing table I never got around to painting, a hand me down glider from the 70s, a crib from Craigslist and a shelving unit. Then Benjamin was born and suddenly I didn't have time or the desire to fix up his room beyond the basics. I promised myself it would be different for this baby, and so far we're making progress! Ben and his little brother will be sharing a room, and although baby #2 will be sleeping close to mama and daddy for a few months I still want their shared space to be ready by the time he gets here.

Before Ben was born we bought a used mid-century dresser off Craigslist to use as a changing table. It was completely beat up with lots of scratches and so many white rings on top that the finish was completely gone. My intent was to paint it white but that never happened. We just lived with it until that "someday" when we could fix it up. Well, 2 1/2 years later it happened!

Here's a before picture. Obviously you can't see the whole dresser, but you can see the scratches up and down the side, and the worn finish.

Joel sanded and stripped the whole thing in his shop. That was a veeeery long process:) Then he stained it a dark walnut.

Ta-Da! The finished product!

After having a couple years to think about it we decided that re-finishing the piece was better than painting since paint would have shown every single ding and scratch. Originally I had wanted to stain it a color close to the original but I'm glad we went with the darker color instead. It's still mid-century appropriate but very masculine and perfect for a boys room. The rest of the space has a lot of white so it needed a dark piece to balance it out. The signed Leroy Neiman print above the dresser is something we bought at auction 3 years ago, and it had been tucked away ever since. I finally took it to be re-framed and I'm glad it can be used in this room.

I'll post more pictures of the nursery as it starts to come together. I think it actually might get done this time!