Hexagon Shelving - Nursery Organization & Decor

A baby enters the world weighing so very little (on average - we won't discuss these outliers that make pregnant women cringe) but has so much stuff. I read about and prepped to be a minimalist parent. But baby still needs stuff. And that stuff needs to go somewhere.

We didn't know if baby was a boy or a girl - which was super exciting. Maybe I will write about what made us decide to keep the gender a surprise one day. but that is not the point of today's post. Today, I am sharing one of the ways The Mister and I decided to organize baby's things. Keeping a nursery gender neutral, minimalist-ish, match the rest of my house, but still fit for a baby was a puzzle. Match the rest of your house? you ask... Yes - that is one of the major ways I decorate. I want to be able to shuffle decor and furniture (for the most part) from room to room and have it make sense. 

But the nursery. My baby's first bedroom. I had fun designing it. The place that my little one would play and dream dreams, where we read and giggle and cuddle together. It felt like a holy task - something I was entrusted to take part in.

So I wanted a fun shelving system to hang about the dresser. Something white and a bit whimsical. Before baby was born, Chris cratfted these beautiful hexagon shelves. The math worked out to 33 degree cuts for the shapes. Then we worked together to come up with a grouping that made the shelves just the right amount of spread out on the wall.

We painted them white because it is me and I like white paint. The white matches the moldings in the room, and what we decided to paint the baby's dresser we bought off of Craigslist. That dresser was taken completely apart and rebuilt with better hardware and put together more securely. It is solid. Add a changing pad, a basket for diapers, a few practical things and a few fun things. Ready for baby!

Finally Finished!

Finally... We have completed the hutch. You know the one.

 

A few issues continued to crop up as we neared the finish line... and it all comes back to my giant mess with the stain. Our new paint (the lovely Marshmallow by Glidden) seemed to be covering it beautifully. But then, after it had cured up nicely, we noticed pink streaks. The stain was still coming through! Silly us. So back to Home Depot we went to get the same paint color, but in a paint and primer in one mixture.

And voilà! A very pretty, finished hutch.

 

 

 

 

Remember the original to-do list for the hutch? Well, many of the things fell away. We decided that we didn't want to install lights. Also, we wanted to make the butcher block darker to make the contrast between the paint color pop more.

 

 

And instead of adding new tracks, I just used candle wax (from some old tea lights) and waxed up the tracks of the drawers. It is like a whole new set of drawers! No squeaking. No sticking. Just effortless gliding to open a drawer. And I was going to line the drawers with paper. But I couldn't figure out a design that I loved enough to install permanently. 

 

 

Well, we have no room in our current place for this piece. I love it. But we are trying to sell it. I don't want this to sit in our garage and waste away. If we sell it, the money will go towards our efforts for a house. If we don't, I hope it doesn't get too banged up in the garage because it will be going in our home. Anyone else have a piece of furniture that transformed and transformed and transformed some more??

At it again...





You are not in the twilight zone. I didn't sustain a brain injury that caused me to forget what I have shared with you. This project just keeps coming back around. I am talking about the hutch . I have talked about it here and here and here and here. I have shared our list... and now the plan with what we are actually going to do with it also keeps changing.

 

But for now, we knew it needed to be repainted... because of a certain situation where my clumsy self spilled stain. We picked another shade of white, but this one is a bit more crisp. It's called toasted marshmallow from Behr. I really like it. And funny story... I dropped the pain can, too. I was able to flip it back over before all of the paint spilled out, but the splash radius was huge. It got everywhere. Seriously, I cried. My sweet husband held me and told me over and over again that its ok. So I got to cleaning and apologizing. And when he saw I was ok, he told me I am no longer allowed to hold paints or stains or anything like that again.

As the hutch is finished and we decide what to do, I will definitely share. But I think whatever we decide, the furniture will be a beautiful piece.

The Hutch - Revisited

Lets talk about that hutch again.

We told you guys about our hutch before - here, here, and here... Remember? We had BIG plans! This was our latest to do list:

Glass in the doors - Hubby wants to find some antiqued glass

Magnets to keep doors closed (so we can nix the twine)

Resquare and support doors

Resquare and support lower desk

Line drawers with pretty paper

Repaint due to my staining fiasco and messy rag handling

Wax up those drawer guides

Well, things have changed. We wanted to get all of that stuff done to put it in our new place! But, we are living in this place and have decided that the hutch would just take up a lot more space than we are willing to give up and it isn't necessary anymore because of all of the cabinet space we have in our kitchen. In our old apartment, we had a total of 4 cabinets and a pantry. Now we have more than triple that.

We don't want to be those people who allow beautiful pieces to waste away so The Mister is finishing the list and will sell it in his Etsy shop! The base is a saved, antique desk and the top is a custom, hand built piece. And let me tell you it is coming along nicely.

I look forward to showing you guys where this goes! The list has already dwindled down, so it shouldn't be too much longer... see:

Glass in the doors - Hubby wants to find some antiqued glass

Magnets to keep doors closed (so we can nix the twine)

Resquare and support doors

Resquare and support lower desk

Line drawers with pretty paper

Repaint due to my staining fiasco and messy rag handling

Wax up those drawer guides

Whoever decides to purchase this will have a unique, custom, sturdy piece built with lots of love.

Upcycled Headboard

When I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment, it was fully furnished. But, I wanted to get some custom pieces to make it feel more like home. So I bought a room divider. At first, it's purpose was to help organize a room I would be sharing with a roommate. Then things changed and it was just me in one bedroom and another roommate in another bedroom.

Above is my old bedroom. You can see the room divider served as my headboard. I purchased it from Hobby Lobby, originally priced at $79.99 but on sale for $40. It followed us to our first apartment together and kind of hopped from place to place. When we moved to our new place, we decided to put a lot of stuff in a closet while we lived in the space and decided what we liked and wanted, decor wise.

We threw around a lot of headboard ideas, particularly ones made from reclaimed wood like I showed you guys here. But, after getting our dresser (I will share all of those details as the room comes together), we just didn't think that style of headboard would a cohesive room make. This prompted us to look at our other options and we remembered our faithful room divider.

Black would have been too dark, so we threw around some other color options and landed on a grey-blue idea. We looked at the options available in spray paint and found the perfect color- just what we had envisioned. Slate blue Rust-oleum. We bought 2 cans of the color and just 1 of primer.



 

Our reasoning for only buying 1 can of primer was that full coverage wasn't super important. The material of the room divider is like that of a basket, and you can clearly see the weave pattern. Because of this, we were confident that the paint would stick, but we didn't want to risk getting a different color by just painting the black material.



So I got to work taking the divider apart. While doing that, I saw that this piece wasn't super high quality. A few screw heads were bent and wonky, making it difficult to unscrew them. The metal hinges had also become discolored and bent up a bit.

 We have a garage now (yay!) so we set up a painting station and got to work. One coat of primer, 2 coats of paint, just following the drying time instructions of the paint.

Before, Middle, Finished

See that texture??

We LOVE the color. And the texture of the room divider. We only painted on side because there wasn't enough paint to do both sides (and the other side is up against the wall... sides and top are painted, though). 



I didn't reattach the divider because 1. The hardware was trash and 2. The pieces together weren't wide enough for our queen (even though they were perfect for my full size).

What do you guys think?? We still need some throw pillows and are debating a couple other additions to the new headboard (like maybe a big M hanging in the middle). But we will see as we live with it! Anyone one else use a room divider for things other than adding a separation to a room.



Building A Planter from Scrap Wood

I told you guys a little while back about our first venture in to having a garden. I had this beautiful idea in my mind - lovely, flourishing herbs in a planter custom built by my man on our new patio. When we built this planter box, it was Easter weekend and we were at my parents house. The herbs were still holding on by a thread at this point, so we were hoping they would pull through and our vision would come to fruition (or herbition --?? I tried.).

We are saving pennies, but still wanted this idea to come to life, so The Mister scrounged up scrap wood from my dads garage as I helped my mom and brother organize an area of it. He managed to find all of the pieces to build it! Pretty amazing, huh?? So here he is to tell you guys about this endeavor! Take it away, honey -

We decided on a box shaped planter with legs. This style would be easy to build and give us plenty of room for plants. So we gathered a few pieces of scrap wood that would form a box. It is usually a good idea to find a design you like and buy the wood in long lengths that can be cut to size. We built this on a Saturday at our family's house, so we didn't plan much. We designed this planter based on what materials were available to use.

After cutting a few pieces of the wood to form the sides and bottom, I like to lay out the pieces to make sure they fit.

Keep in mind we were still in the design process and still laying out pieces to see what was our best option.

It is pretty simple: Measure, mark, and cut. Don't forget to check your measurements.

When using one long piece, leave about 1/8" between cuts to make up for the material that is wasted by each cut.

Above, you see that I am cutting 3' legs out of a 12' 3/4" piece of 2x2. Its really 1.5"x1.5".

Sometimes its better to measure for each cut.

Safety glasses don't look cool, but being safe is cool. Trust me.

Cutting out a rough corner to make room for the legs.

Screws are the fastest and most secure way to put most projects together, which gives you more time to spend with the ones you love. Lola likes working on projects with us. She's a good shop dog.

Remember it doesn't have to be perfect, just sturdy.

One leg at a time.

After attaching the legs, it's a good idea to stand the planter up and see if its level or not. One leg was shorter on this project. This is nothing a little sandpaper can't fix.

I had a screw go through one side of this piece. I repositioned and a new screw went in just fine.

Notice the fact that I'm not wearing safety glasses? Don't do this. Wear impact resistant glasses when using tools. I was switching back and forth between my glasses and the safety glasses every time I used the drill or the saw, but I forgot a few times when I was using the drill.

Using 2 screws to secure the leg braces was a great idea, but it is really easy to crack the wood if you aren't careful.

Measuring to find the center where I would attach the center brace.

Sanding the legs to level the planter.

The project is almost complete. The only thing left to do is paint or stain the wood.

Isn't it so nice to hear from the love of my life? He is a wonderful, handsome man indeed. There aren't any specific dimensions on this particular post because this was literally scrapped together on the fly - very little planning and whatnot before hand. But, The Mister did say he was willing to write up a "How To Build A Planter Box" with a more step-by-step tutorial. If you're interested. Make a request in the comment box. Ready to show you guys the next phase to this project - in an upcoming post titled "Green Thumb Part 2."