The Shortest Lived Office

The nursery was my office in it’s previous life and while Mike was in Chicago and our pregnancy plans were put on hold I figured I’d redo my office.  I mentioned the idea here and then showed my plans here, but we wasted no time after Mike got home getting pregnant and I never stopped to show you the office space before it was made over into the nursery.  It was never finished, let alone styled, so they’re just phone photos, but I thought it was fun to see.

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I had bought all the items that I had planned to, knowing they would all move into the guest room when we switched over this room. 

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I had thought it would be a little longer like this so I even bought a small cabinet to be used to store my cutting machines.  It was only $35 on Craigslist and had awesome hardware, but unfortunately a faux wood stained paint job too.  Yes, in the photos I was fooled and thought this was stained wood, but once I examined it it was pretty obvious it was painted to look like wood grain (why?!).

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This is where the dark blue paint came from.  I had wanted a dark blue piece anyways and cleaned it up and painted it Sherwin Williams 7615 Sea Serpent.  Due to a miscommunication at the store I was sold a gallon of All Surface Enamel, which was awesome for this project but I didn’t know what I was going to do with a whole gallon of it. 

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It’s a good thing I loved the color, and at first I was worried about painting the wall with it, but I figured if any wall in our house could use the extra protection, it’s the wall in the nursery!  I got really lucky when it worked well with the rug I bought.

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The light in this room can be really great and I was looking forward to styling it as an office, but I was even more excited when we got the news that we would need this room for something else!  Everything moved down the hall except for the rug, which I sold at a loss since it was too small for the new space and the old rug was still in good shape. 

One day I’ll photograph that room, hopefully before we have another kid and I lose my office all together!  

Our Finished Basement

Over the weekend I had to look up something so I used my Home Tour page and realized how out of date it was!  I decided to fix that and started in the basement mostly because it was the cleanest at the time!

I’ve shown updates here and there like our Christmas decorations, but never a full tour of the space and how it looks most of the time.

Finished Basement

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There was a lot of work done to get it to this point below (check out this tag to see all the work), and after that it was easy in comparison to finish it off to become one of the most comfortable spots in the house.

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I actually prefer to watch TV down here, but in the winter months it’s a little chilly and thinking ahead to turn the space heater on beforehand is sometimes too much.  Now that the weather is finally warming up here, (not to mention we’ve found Archer wakes up if we watch TV right below him right after he goes to bed), we’ve been spending more time down here again.

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We bought the sectional used and it will probably stay with the house because it was a hassle getting it down the stairs and its the perfect size for the space.  We also added a fauxdenza using Ikea kitchen cabinets the same way we did for the living room

Finished Basement Fauxdenza

It’s awesome for storage, and it helps to even out the room since the sectional and TV are set up further into the room.  Making it almost the whole wall keeps the room from feeling lopsided.

Finished Basement Fauxdenza 1

Finished Basement Fauxdenza 2

I’ve explained the art above the sofa before, but for those new here the larger art on the right is actually hiding our circuit breaker access!

Finished Basement Gallery Wall

On the other side are the stairs and anyone who’s been around for awhile knows the work that went into building and finishing them, and they had to get worse before getting better.

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But, all the work paid off and not only do we have gorgeous new stairs, but we have a lot more efficient storage.

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The paneling was actually designed to hide the new storage spaces.

Basement Under Stair Storage

To the right of the stairs is the little hall with the beer keezer and the bathroom, as well as the new closet.  And a special sighting of my little llama helper!

Finished Basement Stairs

Finished Basement Hall

Finished Basement Keezer

Beer Tap Chalkboard Sign

Since the beer was over here and I wanted a way to show off Mike’s homebrewing accomplishments I thought a little gallery wall above the paneling would be perfect.  It’s a lot of beer art with some photos from our Europe trip including our trip to the Pislner Urquell brewery and the Hofbräuhaus München.  There’s also a spot for some of Mike’s medals! 

Finished Basement Beer Gallery Wall

Overall, I love this space down here! It’s bright and comfy, two descriptives rarely used for a basement, and I can’t wait to keep cool for some Netflix binge sessions during the upcoming warmer months.

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For more photos of what this space looked like when we bought the house and links to all the work we did, check out the Home Tour page!

Lifesavers and Special Items in the Nursery

When I talked about Archer’s nursery I pointed out the main components of most nurseries: the crib, the dresser/changing table, the rocking chair.  While those are obviously important, I’ve collected a few special items that were handmade for Archer, or unique lifesavers that I thought I’d share.  These are obviously personal to our situation, but I thought by sharing they may be helpful to someone else too!

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The first our the crib sheets.  From the photo above they look pretty basic, but they’re actually a genius zippered crib sheet called QuickZip.

QuickZip Top SheetWhat’s so great is that it’s a fitted sheet that can be changed quickly by zipping off the top sheet instead of removing the entire fitted sheet.  I didn’t realize it but crib mattresses are heavy!  I’d hate to pick that thing up every time I needed to change the sheet.  Archer hasn’t had any diaper disasters on the sheets (yet) but he has spit up his lunch a time or two and I can easily pick him up, unzip the old sheet, toss in the hamper, grab a new one and zip up, all with one hand!

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I got mine from Amazon and got a set of 3 top sheets with one base.  It was a pricey investment to buy the whole set at once, but well worth it!

The next lifesaver wasn’t shown in the nursery reveal because it is a little bulky (for the small table) and doesn’t look great in photos.  On the little table next to the chair usually sits our little mini fridge.

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And when I say mini fridge, this isn’t your dorm room fridge, more like a micro mini fridge.

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Mike bought it for me from Amazon and it’s a 4 liter (6 can) mini fridge!  We were running downstairs multiple times each night/day for milk and Mike being Mike figured there had to be a better way!  This fits a couple bottles and bags of milk and is right next to me in the middle of the night.

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The best part is, when we’re done needing the milk throughout the night (during the day Archer will be at a sitters), we can use this for the car or camping!

The next item I mentioned in the reveal, but I think it’s worth noting here too, are the book ledges.  I knew if Archer was anything like his dad, I would need to think about the items I installed not only in terms of a little baby, but also a rambunctious toddler.  That means these ledges had to be strong!

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These from Amazon are advertised as twice as thick as the usual acrylic ledges and are said to be unbreakable.  We’ll see about that in a few years, but that and Mike’s anchoring made me feel a little better installing these!

Another item not pictured was something we bought after I took the photos, an iPad stand.

iPad Stand
Since I liked being in the nursery, and those first couple months it seemed like all we did was nurse and sleep, I found myself trying to get things done on my iPad but struggling to do it with only one hand.  This stand was awesome!  I could catch Queer Eye on Netflix during those dreaded cluster feedings and I could answer emails from work while Archer was napping in my arms.  I tried to cheap out and buy one that clipped onto the crib, but it couldn’t hold the weight, so Mike found this one for me.  I use it less nowadays now that we have a sort of schedule and his night feedings are more like dreamfeeds where I can do them in the dark in less than 20 minutes.  But, again it’s something we can use around the house when we aren’t using it in the nursery anymore.

The final item was something I handmade for the room, the painted globe. 

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The idea is all over Pinterest and I knew I wanted to have one in this Tibetan Sherpa themed room.  It wasn’t that difficult, and was actually kind of relaxing (which was nice those last couple weeks before Archer was due) to paint.  It’s not something I could bring down to play with, unless I clear-coated, maybe with some Modge Podge, but I like looking at it!

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Like any room in the house, some of these were designed into it from the beginning, and some were added after we saw the need, but all of these items are special and/or lifesavers and worth twice as much as we paid for them (anything that gives me 10 extra minutes of sleep is worth it’s weight in gold these days)!  If I can give that extra time to any other mamas out there I'll gladly share my finds!  My sister (who just welcomed her little one yesterday!) is already getting the zippered crib sheets after I raved about mine!