Click me!
One of the first things that my wife and I thought about when we found out that we were going to have a second bundle of sleepless nights bawling dirty diapers joy was that we would need to make an effort to get our eldest out of her current room and into a Big Girl Room.
You see, when we bought our home here in Wisconsin, it was listed in the MLS as four bedrooms. One of the bedrooms, however, is rather small and attached directly to the master bedroom as well as the hallway.
In showing us the house, our agent said to us: ”You could use it as an office…or a hobby room….or an extended closet area. Of course, this is after you use it as a nursery.” (My wife was six months pregnant at the time)
For two years, the room functioned as our nursery for our eldest. And it functioned well for us. Never underestimate the value of reducing the number of obstacles and hazards between your formerly sleeping body and your screaming infant child. Stairs and hallways are your enemies at three in the morning.
So, once we found out we were having a second child, we decided that it was time for our little girl to grow up. After all, the room directly of ours was a nursery, not a Big Girl Room.
One of my wife’s projects for the summer (detailed in previous posts) was to transform one of the back bedrooms from a wallpapered timewarp to the Seventies into a nice, elegant, gentle little girls room. After issues such as lead paint and cleaning lead paint were resolved, we pondered to ourselves: ”How will we decorate this space?”
Over the past few months, we’d accumulated a number of pieces of art from an aspiring and talented young artist. This artist had created a style of painting that’s very cute and very child friendly. The major theme of the pieces we’d acquired so far was birds. They appeared in each piece.
Then one day I was flipping through an issue of “This Old House”, and I saw a nice little project idea. There was picture of a young mother decorating her own child’s room. One one wall she was painting a nice outline of a tree in bloom. On that painting she was hanging real birdhouses, giving the wall a whimsical 3D look and feel.
I showed my wife the picture and said: ”That’s what we’ll do! That’s how we’ll tie into the paintings we have already.”
And my wife said, “Great idea! One problem, though. I can’t paint that.”
My wife has a talent for applying paint across wide swaths of unpainted walls. Fine artistry eludes her.
I personally have trouble even getting the paint on the unpainted walls.
One of our friends then offered the suggestion that we see if the source of our artwork would be willing to do a larger mural piece.
Turns out that she was.
So yesterday we put the final touches on the mural and the new room. Furniture is moved in, the premise has been explained to our daughter, and she’s fully intrigued by the birds and the bunnies and the tree that’s in her Big Girl Room.
She’s less intrigued by the thought of sleeping there, so that’s been a bit of a battle.
But we’re patient. She’ll come around. Any day now.
Here are a few pictures:
