Finding a Place for Baby: Part III |

The saga of finding a place for our new addition (remember–he or she will be arriving some time around June 24, 2011!) continues (read parts I and II for the back story). We arrived back from our amazingly relaxing babymoon in Jamaica to find that, as promised, our contractor had completed the work in the office. We rushed into the office the minute we got back from the airport to check it out and were thrilled–despite the fact that the whole house seemed to be covered in a very find dusting of sawdust. Recall what the room looked like when we left after we packed everything up:

Here’s what it looked like when we arrived back home:

Now, of course this doesn’t look finished at all, but we were able to save about $1,000 by telling our contractor that we’d finish the cabinets ourselves, which is why things look so, well, unfinished. But still, we’re thrilled with the way it all turned out. There were a few compromises (they weren’t able to sneak in extra shelves on either side of the radiator like we had hoped) but for the most part, I think they did a really beautiful job. We especially love the detailed work they did on the radiator cover. And we tried out the window seat and it definitely feels sturdy, which is great because besides the rocker and ottoman we’ve ordered, this will probably be the only place for grownups to sit in the room!

So as soon as we got back we set to work on getting the cabinets finished so that we could eventually start putting some stuff back in the room. One thing we realized when starting this process is that the trim in the office is a different shade of white from that in other areas of the house, so we unfortunately couldn’t use paint we already had without re-painting EVERY surface, which we wanted to avoid. So we brought home some white paint chips (the most boring kind, in my opinion) and purchased some no-VOC primer from Lowe’s. We had a local shop here in Evanston (Healthy Green Goods) match some non-toxic no-VOC paint to our chosen white and we were set to go. I know pregnant women are advised not to do any painting, so I actually did very little of it (even though we got the good no-VOC stuff). I would say that 90% of the priming and painting were done by DH. He did it over about a week–a half hour to hour here and there. It sounds like it was really annoying with all the shelves needing to be primed on one side, and then the other, and then painted on one side, and then the other. Unfortunately, it is still too cold out for us to take the shelves outside, so we had to do all this while maneuvering in a rather small space (the couch, a storage bench, and a desk are all still in there!). Definite kudos, shout outs, and many hugs to DH for getting this done!

Here’s a pic of all his hard work in process: