Painting the Closet

Since the nursery is a very small room, there's not a lot of space for furniture.  So we have planned on using the closet for all of the baby's clothes storage.  Since we won't have a dresser, we want shelves and baskets to hold all her cute little baby things.  And for easy access we won't have any doors on the closet, so of course, I want it to be pretty!  Naturally, I turned to Pinterest for ideas!

Source: Uploaded by user via Bethany on Pinterest

Source: projectnursery.com via Bethany on Pinterest

As I found closets that I liked, I noticed that most of them had some kind of wall treatment to add a little interest and give the closet a finished look that really made it feel like part of the room.  So Scott and I went wallpaper shopping!  We found a darling green wallpaper with a nice gold print that was exactly the accent we wanted in the closet.  And then we found out the price.  It was going to cost $100 to order enough wallpaper to cover our tiny little closet.  And, my friends, that was just NOT in the budget.  So I moped for awhile, and then started looking for plan B.

I remembered this post by Centsational Girl where she showed how she painted a lovely trellis pattern in her master bedroom.  So I searched for "painted wallpaper" on Pinterest...

Source: jonesdesigncompany.com via Bethany on Pinterest

Enter this blog post from Jones Design Company.  (This is the same blogger that wrote Twirl.)  I printed off the free pattern she shared, cut it out of some stencil plastic from the craft store, and recruited the help of my best friend Krystle.  After Scott and his brother had removed the closet shelf and hanging rod and given it a fresh coat of white paint, Krystle began tracing the pattern...

Then when she had traced a big chunk of wall space, I would take over that spot and start painting...

It was a little scary at first...my brush strokes looked amateur and the spacing wasn't perfect...

But we persevered...and something lovely began to take shape!

(Side note: I had the most terrible time finding a shirt to paint in.  None of my grubby clothes fit over the bump, and my husband is so slender that even his biggest t-shirt barely worked.)

In the original tutorial, Emily offset her stencil to make a gorgeous double lined image.  Krys and I kept it simple.  And I'm glad we did.  Even with our simplified version, we worked from 11:15 to 3:30 with only very brief breaks to eat (or in my case to pee...thank you sweet baby that sits on my bladder...).

At the end of the day, we had spent $7 on the stencil plastic and a bottle of acrylic craft paint...and we took the little nursery closet from this:

To this:

This is the new view from the glider in the corner of the nursery.  I know that soon, much of our handiwork will be covered by shelves, baskets, and pretty little baby clothes.  But I think that this pattern showing through will make all the difference in making our closet feel like part of the room.  I love it!