Fall 2018 One Room Challenge – DIY Nursery Room Renovation (Week 1)

I couldn’t be more excited for participating of the the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE. It’s my first time and I will sharing with you the renovation of a special space in my house, my nursery. I am happy to be working on her room and being able to share how the space that used to be my office looked before and how it will look at the end of this renovation.

The idea was to make a floral mural as the focal point of Amelie’s bedroom. Initially, I was absolutely lost and didn’t have any idea of what design I would go with. For some time I believed that I would never be able to transfer to the wall what I had more or less in my mind. I confess that drawing on the wall was a challenge because of its texture, which made me renew my stock of brushes every week as I used them to paint another mural for my toddler’s bedroom.

As you can see from the before photos what I called an office was used more as a storage than anything. Therefore, I was very excited to work on transforming this little space into something amazing for my baby girl. I had been thinking of creating a wonderful floral themed nursery for months prior I gave birth to Amelie. However, I had to postpone it as I would be the one to do it and I didn’t think it’s wise to work with paint and its chemicals while pregnant.

For this bedroom, I wanted to keep everything else the same palette other than the mural one color from floor to ceiling. I painted everything out white and I loved the way it visually expanded the space. The same color is also the background on top of which I have created the floral mural.

Nursery Room Renovation – The Importance of Sketching Your Ideas

It took me several days to finish half of the wall, which could have been done much faster if not for two reasons; first, I didn’t start my painting with a simple sketch and believe me, this is a very crucial thing to do in order to avoid mistakes and give you a better vision of your idea. Second, I have two little babies to take care of and one of them, I am still nursing every two hours.

Let’s talk a little about the importance of drawing a sketch before you take any action towards your plan on creating a mural. If you really want to save lots of money or simply don’t have the capital to spend on wallpaper, I recommend the famous DIY. Drawing this floral mural was tough but fun. It requires a moderate level of drawing skills and can really give you the look of wallpaper you want. But, do not overlook or simply ignore the need for sketching out your design ideas on some paper as I did. Since I ignored this step, I wasted a lot of time redrawing the flowers until I got the look I wanted. Don’t make this mistake, plan ahead and design your ideas on a piece of scratch paper, so you can visualize what you have in mind and then transfer this to the wall.

You may think that installing wallpaper would be much easier and I agree. I would argue that this does not give you the same feeling of accomplishing something with your own hands and creativity and also the cost of buying enough wallpaper to cover that huge wall wasn’t within my budget. Saving money is always a goal in any renovation I do in my house.

The Color Palette – Choose One Or Two Colors

As wallpaper was off the table, it was time to choose the color palette. To maintain a harmony I focused in just two main shades; light pink and soft yellow with an accent of olive green and gold. If you really want your mural to pop up following the rule of “less is more” is crucial. So, don’t go nuts on colors by selecting too many. Have just two or three main shades and some other to build a sort of background for them.

When designing, I always like to have a main inspiration to pull from. In this case, I knew I wanted it to be floral. Initially, I was very reluctant about the design while drawing on the wall. I wasn’t sure if it would be something that I would love or just an “okay looking” mural. First I drew the big flowers with a carpenter pencil and then I filled them up with my selected colors.

Part of my job was to find the cheapest way to make my plans to come true. Luckily the acrylic craft paints and brushes I got from Michael’s were inexpensive. So, here I am telling you that is possible to spend little and still have the nursery of your dreams as beautiful as the ones you see on those fancy bloggers pages you follow.

So, for the first week my job was basically filling up the wall with flower drawings and then insert colors to them.

The End of The First Week

I ended up this week of the renovation by having my husband installing the new baseboards and trims in certain parts of Amelie’s bedroom. The flat and large baseboards I chose look gorgeous with my design and the Craftsman door’s trim give just the perfect final touch the room. I think I will need at list one more week to finish the other other half of the floral panel. Stay tuned. I will see you next week.

Click here to see our TODDLER BEDROOM RENOVATION

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