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Snap, is that what I think it is? Yep, Liam is going to be a big brother! Here are the quick stats:
- Kristen is right at 18-19 weeks
- The due date is August 17, but it will likely be born August 3 if this one's anything like Liam
- It's still an "it" to us for now, but we find out the gender on Monday (3/23)
- Kristen and I completely don't care if it's a boy or girl
- Liam is 100% convinced it's a girl and won't hear otherwise
- Kristen and I are about equal parts excited and terrified, Liam is all parts excited
- We haven't even begun to think about names, but even if we had one picked out we wouldn't tell
So partly because of the new baby (and partly just because we wanted to), Kristen and I decided to give Liam a new room, a little boy's room instead of a baby one. So we started with a blank slate - what was the guest room, which we hadn't done anything to in terms of paint. Here it is in all it's blank slate "stone wheat" goodness:
We had actually already painted two of the walls the off white you see there, I forgot to take a true before pic, but that's pretty close. So the entire room was the creamy beige to start with, and we painted two opposing walls (and the ceiling) white. What's going on the other two walls, you ask?
Ooh, yeah, hello beautiful. The remaining two beige walls were painted with this gorgeous navy blue, and voila!
Is that it? Pfft! Of course not! What else could we have planned?
That's right baby, stripes! Alternating navy and white stripes, to be exact, on the other two opposing walls. We have a cool wall of stripes in Liam's old baby room, which, if I do say so myself, is pretty freaking awesome:
However, the intervening fog of years and sleep deprivation made me forget what a serious pain in the ass it is to paint stripes on walls as textured as ours. Even with the amazing frog tape, I had to paint the blue stripes on top of the white, then go back and re-tape over the blue, just leaving the ragged edges exposed, and paint white on top of that.
But ultimately my persistence to stripedness (stripenicity?) was rewarded with the sharpest paint lines you've ever seen. Go ahead. Zoom in. I dare you to find a blot, a smudge, anything besides perfection.
By the way, I got smart on the second wall of stripes. On the first one, I laid out the tape lines using a long 4' level and a measuring tape. It was pretty good, but not perfect. Then I remembered that I have one of the coolest tools ever invented: the laser level. This thing has paid for itself so many times over in saved time and amazing alignment. It helped out later on, too.
I think it took me about 20 minutes to lay out the tape lines using the laser level. The first wall probably took at least an hour. I'm still smacking myself about that one. I digress.
Stripes complete, this concluded the painting section of the remodel. Now, along with my trusty 4 year old helper, I got to put together the next big thing for Liam's new little boy room: a brand new big boy bed!
Kristen found this cool bed (of course - she finds all the cool stuff) which has drawers underneath - ridiculously handy, and cute to boot. And she also located The Cutest Little Boy Bed Blanket Ever. Liam helpfully tested the mattress strength. Here's the bed with awesome blanket sans jumping bean:
Next addition, an awesome star night light mounted to the wall, and this great bedside table and lamp. All found by Kristen (as if you had to ask).
A few more smaller touches: awesomely quirky shelving (currently proudly displaying Lego builds), fun wire bin for holding all things bouncy and lightsaber-y, and cute-as-a-button growth chart.
Oh, I almost forgot - we also added some crown molding to the room (or is it moulding? I'm gonna go American on this one). It's a small touch, but it really adds a little something. We went with a nice narrow one since the ceiling is pretty low. Liam's new room actually had a number of fun little angles to challenge me - no 4-corners-at-90-degrees-each boringness here.
But without a doubt, my favorite thing we've done in Liam's room is the array of airplane prints. Kristen found these amazing hand drawn water color prints of vintage aircraft on an Etsy shop that are just spectacular. We picked out and got 6 of our favorites and put them in white frames with a white matte, to be hung on the solid blue wall right above Liam's bed.
Wait, I have to hang an array of rectangular frames in a precise geometric grid? Best day ever! And yes, you guessed it, laser level to the rescue!
I mean, really, it's almost criminal how easy this thing makes it. Need them all the same height? Mark the height you want, move the laser level up to the line and bam! Instant horizontal alignment. Now you need the next line to be level and line up vertically with your top holes, too? Bam! Done - with one measurement only! I love this thing. Here's the final result:
I know, it's amazing. I give 90% credit to Kristen, 5% to myself for handyman work, and 5% to my laser level for sheer awesomeness. I might need to name this thing.
So that's it for now. We have plans for some really cool shelving to put on the other wall of stripes, which is currently sitting bare. We're probably going to change out the ubiquitous ceiling fan/light for a cooler light fixture as well, and then I think we'll be done.
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