The Nursery {Before}.

Happy Monday, loves! I am back at work this morning (wishing - albeit futilely - that my office observed the same holidays as the government does). B and I had a very productive weekend, so at least I do feel like we squeezed absolutely every second possible out of the two days that we did have off...

Today, I thought I'd update you on nursery progress. Since I've talked so much about the nursery - and the stresses I've experienced in getting a color scheme and furniture picked out for it - I thought I would do a couple of progress posts as we tackle this project. I have some inspiration pieces that I plan to share, but I thought it might be good to show you all what we are working with first. Over the weekend, the hubs and I buckled down and got to work. And by work, I mean work. Several hours worth of bending and lifting. Cleaning and sorting. Organizing and re-arranging. Sweeping and mopping. Dusting and wiping. Pushing and pulling. Tacking and nailing. It was hard. But rewarding. And not just because I burned enough calories to justify eating more Valentine chocolate than anyone should in a day...

But because we are finally looking at what will be baby boy's nursery. We have made visible progress and it excites me to no end. I thought I would share a few glimpses of our progress with you. In looking back, I should have taken a few more pictures while in the process of dismantling the rooms, so that you ladies could get the full effect of what we are dealing with. But, I didn't, so the two hastily snapped smartphone shots I did get will just have to do.

First Up: The nursery - 'Before.' (Formerly known as the 'black and white' guest room)

Sorry it's so blurry - it looked fine on my phone screen. And please ignore Ellie's crate in the corner.

As you can see, this was definitely NOT a baby's room. Until Saturday, it was one of two guest bedrooms in our house. We referred to it as the black and white room - for obvious reasons. Most of the furniture and decorative items in here were actually mine before B and I got married. I purchased them all during the the year and a half that I spent getting my Master's degree in education. And then we went and got married. So it just made sense to transfer all of these little-used items into a guest room. This room has actually become a favorite in our house; our guests love staying in it. 

Because of this, we have decided to keep the black and white room. Just not in it's original abode. Because this room is closer to our bedroom than our other guestroom, we decided to make this room the nursery. So, on Saturday, we hauled everything out of the other guest room for storage, and moved everything in the black and white guest room right next door. Despite being very time consuming and laborious, it was fairly simple to just switch the rooms. You see, the other guest room has been sadly neglected over the last 2 years - ever since we purchased the home in fact. Oh, it's been functional. With a bed, dresser, chest and nightstand. But it's never gotten the amount of TLC that the other rooms in the house have gotten. I like to think that's because subconsciously I knew we would eventually be making room for a baby and wouldn't need this space for guests. Whatever the reason, this room has now been transformed and looks just gorgeous in all of it's black and white glam glory. 

View into the other guest room after we completed the transition.

And here, my friends, is Caleb's nursery as of today: 

It looks so much bigger without any furniture in it (this shot was taken from halfway into the room). It literally echoes in there now. I can't wait to fill it up with pretty furniture and interesting textures.

Funny side note: As you can see in the picture, we didn't even have to change the wall colors in order to accommodate the switching of the rooms. Because they are the same color. For some reason, the previous owner of the home painted both guest bedrooms a limey green color (which is actually a lot prettier in person than in the picture). That color will not be staying long in the nursery, as there will be no lime green in there; however, it does work well with the black and white guest room theme, so we were able to keep that color in the guest room. No additional painting = one happy hubby.

So, you've seen the space now. And seen how much work has to be done in the coming weeks! Inspiration and updates posts to come before a final reveal. Which will hopefully occur sometime before the baby arrives:)