Cole's Room

OK people- let's be honest.  Who doesn't love peeking inside other people's homes?  Right?!   


Because the correct answer is "EVERYONE likes to peek in other people's homes", I decided to share today.  Except, it's not our home as we live currently.  As I've mentioned before, we recently moved to CT from Syracuse, NY, so this is Cole's nursery from back in our Syracuse days (plus Cole doesn't have a "nursery" anymore-- he's now got a "big boy" room).  


I thought I'd do a post about the nursery that we set up for Cole when he was born (3.5 years ago) because we DIYed a few things in his room that we really liked.  First though-- a  quick tour of the room is in order.  The good, the bad and the ugly (and some of it's kinda ugly).  We actually spent very little money putting together his room (as any good cheapskate would do), and we're pretty pleased with how it came out.  Now--- on with the show!

The house that we bought in Syracuse was built in 1920-- it was an old house and we inherited some "interesting" old house-isms.  Neither of us are all that home improvement handy so some of these things were "worked around" instead of fixed.  Case in point, the cords behind the crib.  There was an old phone jack, a cable cord, and some other cord extruding from the wall-- we're still unsure of what it was.  Instead of tearing them out and patching things up (especially since the next owners might WANT a cable hook-up in this room), we set-up the room so that they were not reachable by a small child.  Oh, and the "boom box" was there for function, not style-- I should have moved it before snapping pictures, but.... I didn't.

The rug was left over from my old apartment.  It was really girly in that apartment, but somehow it still seemed to work in this space too.


It was a fairly small room.  We liked to call it "cozy".  It also had to have multiple functions as we had "visitors" often enough that we needed to have extra sleeping spaces for the other 3 kids whenever they were at our house.  

We still wanted it to feel like "Cole's Room" though too.  please ignore the wrinkled bedskirt.  sing it with me-- emmmbaaaarraaassiiiing.

Paper mache letters that I covered with fabric. 

The crib was purchased new.  It was one of the few things we purchased new for this room.  (Allow me to address the pillow in his crib -- I didn't take photos of the room until just before we transformed it into his "big boy" room so he was old enough to safely sleep with a pillow at this point.)

We wanted Cole to get to know his brother and sisters even though they didn't live with us full time, so we took photos of the 3 kids and hung them just above the changing table/dresser so that with each diaper change we could say "hi" to the kids.


The dresser (which I didn't take a before photo of) we purchased for $15 at a thrift store.  It was kind of a "honey" color.  We painted it 'Crisp Linen' and LOVE how it turned out!  We debated changing out the hardware too, but when we put it back together, we decided we actually really liked the old (cleaned up) hardware.

The bed is an antique hand-me-down.  It was my grandmother's bed when she was a young girl which means it's somewhere in the vicinity of 90 years old (depending on exactly when she got it).  She gave it to me when I got my first apartment back in my college days.  It means so much to me. (she also gave Cole that white bear hugging the pink bear--  ummm...such a great-grandma gift).  My mother made the cute knit lion.

We re-used additional pillows from the set we registered for when we were married, but added the fun Dwell Studio dinosaur pillow from Target.  I think I paid $4.98 for it.  It takes the bed from being kinda "stuffy" to being fun for a little boy too.

Years earlier I purchased the "hassock" at an estate sale.  I think it was $25.  It is very vintage and very cool.   Made a great seat when putting on little kid shoes.  The toy basket was a shower gift filled with all kinds of baby goodies..

The rocking chair was my mother's.  She used to rock us kids in it when we were wee ones so it holds a special place for me too.  I debated the plush rockers/nursing chairs that everyone else was getting, but decided to go the sentimental route instead.  I'm really glad I did.  (there are those stupid cords again-- argh)  Elmo came from my mom too.  Of course-- the biggest toys always come from other people.  But he sticks around-- did you spot him in this post?

This piece is also an antique that I scavenged from my parent's basement when I first moved into an apartment of my own.   I always meant to re-finish it, but never got around to it.  Usually I had a plant over that one big water spot.  Eventually, I came to kinda like it like this though-- it has history and character right?  If we use it in our next home however, I will definitely find a way to transform it and get rid of those water stains on the top.  It actually has some cool details in the top that get lost because you get distracted by the water spots.

One of my personal favorite things in his room (also a gift).  It's a Meyda Tiffany turtle light.  We used it as Cole's nighlight in his room.  It's got a really pretty glow when it's turned on. (please excuse the poor photo quality too.)

Both my husband and I worked for our local PBS station at some point in our careers (it's actually where we met), so we amassed a collection of Sesame Street stuffed animals when Cole was born and it only made sense to give them a place in his room-- kind of an om age to his mom and dad.  (The three scruffy ones were actually mine when I was little-- my mom dug them up for me.)

This basket was a shower gift as well.  The safety pins were from a shower game.  We didn't ever use them, but I thought they were a nice symbol of all the love we received from our wonderful family and friends.

What's in our basket?- the usual baby stuff.  Diapers, wipes, lotions, creams, and two glass jars-- one with cotton balls, the other with cotton swabs.  We kept other baby essentials (ie. bulb syringe, baby hair brush, nail clippers etc.)  in one of the top drawers of the dresser.

And we added some unexpected touches as well- like a lizard above the window.

 Cole's first ever stuffed animal which was bigger than him when he was first born.

And I just had to include this last picture because I think it's ADORABLE. 

So there you have it.  Cole's nursery.  I'll be sharing some of the DIY things that we did in the next few days.  Hope you enjoyed our little tour!

Trash to Treasure: Coffee table

I've been a cheapskate for a long time and my coffee table is a project that I did a long time ago.  Well, it was a total fluke actually.  I feel today may be the time to tell it's story though. 

*please ignore ugly apartment carpeting*

When I was in college a couple of 12 (yikes!) years ago, I worked at a custom frame shop in the mall called 'Prints Plus'.   The store was located next to an eclectic furniture and home decor store (name rhymes with 'Pompey' Company).  My store manager knew our neighboring store's manager and learned that when items at their store were damaged, they were required to throw them away.  If it was a "set" of some sort though, the different pieces of the set had to be thrown out on separate days.

Being a mall store, all of our trash was put out in the back hallways for trash removal.  That means our trash was put out right next to the trash of the eclectic furniture store.  One day our store manager came back from putting out the trash lugging a heavy iron circle.  She didn't know what it was or what she would do with it, but she wanted it - it had great detail.   It sat in our back room for a few weeks until it found the way to her home..  

Weeks after that when I was putting our store's trash out to the back hallway, I came across 4 legs to something.  I swear I wasn't even looking for trash-- they were just set out next to the bags-- not even IN anything.  They were really pretty.  So... in our store they came.  I wasn't sure what I would do with them either.  I thought of cutting the screw part off and using them as decorative pieces somehow.  

By this time my manager realized that she couldn't figure out exactly how to use her iron piece,  so she said she'd bring it back in for me if I wanted-- she noticed that it had holes in the bottom, roughly the size of the screws in the top of my table legs she thought.    

yeah, we both squealed when we saw the perfect fit

Once we knew they would fit, the next question was of stability. Would these legs be able to bear the weight of the iron circle thingy and a glass top.  The thick metal screw thingy (clearly I'm a technical writer) runs the entire length of the leg so I had no fear of it snapping off at the top.  

I've had the table for 10 years and my 3 year old son now sits on it (which he's not supposed to do) and pushes on it with his feet and we've had NO issues.

Anyway, my mom found a great, thick piece of pre-cut beveled glass somewhere (I don't remember where) for $40 and it just happened to be the PERFECT size -- It's like this table was meant to be!   My only other investment in it was a $1.97 package of clear gel "bumpers" to cushion the glass and help it stay in place.  

To this day I'm not sure if these pieces were mean't to go together or not.  So until I see otherwise, I'm saying $41.97 is a pretty good investment for a one-of-a-kind, interesting, eclectic coffee table.

Before - pieces...

and after.

My "new" lamp.

So this project I actually did before we moved to CT, but I am in LOVE with it so I thought I’d share.  My new favorite thing in the whole world might just be spray paint (or these delicious pumpkin cookies I can’t stop making—seriously, they are so good!  I’ll share the recipe later).  Spray paint is so easy and makes a such a HUGE difference that I may never again buy anything new, just spray paint what I already have.  

Anyway — I bought this lamp at a thrift store back “home” in Syracuse—the Thrifty Shopper for those in Central New York — for my office at work.  It was … are you ready for this?  Two dollars!!!  It didn’t have a shade but it worked and I had a shade in the basement from an old lamp from of my grandmother's that worked just fine so for just $2 I had a new lamp for my office.

It's very '70s, but I really kinda liked the detail (for my office)

The apartment that we moved into had little to offer in the lighting department so we knew we’d have to bring lamps.  Instead of buying all new, I decided to transform this little gem into something we would actually use in our home. 

I taped off the top socket part of the lamp and the cord to keep those parts clean and started with a coat of spray primer.  Just a quick coat was all it took.  I may have been able to do without it, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way.  Plus it’s just a couple of bucks for a can of spray paint so… couldn’t hurt right?

When that was completely dry, the lamp took 2 coats of flat black spray paint.  I debated flat or glossy but flat paint won out in the end.  I figured if I ended up not liking the flat paint I could always add a coat of clear glossy spray.

I was going to purchase fabric to custom cover the shade, but I was afraid (since I was doing this project as a way of procrastinating packing our belongings into boxes)I wouldn’t have the opportunity to give the project the time it needed.  Luckily it was Target to the rescue!

(insert rousing trumpet blare here)  Lampshade:  $9.99!  

Aaaannndd…. It’s done and residing in our new home.  So easy.

yeah-- it's a photo from Halloween.  We don't always have skulls on display in our home.

Hooray!  I love our ‘new’ lamp!

Anybody got any good spray paint transformation stories they want to share?