The LAST (sniff) (at least for now) Nursery Post: $11 Big Wooden Whale

I think I first got the idea for making a big wooden whale while I was poking around looking at ocean animal stuff on Etsy and saw a few from various sellers on there. For prices like $80-90 + shipping (and shipping is a lot on a big wooden whale). I was pretty sure that if Dave and I combined forces, we could make a whale for a lot less than that.

And, look, we could!

It seems that the way our big nursery projects go is that every other project is more of a pain in the ass than I expect, and then the alternating ones are less so than I expect. Fortunately, we were due for easier than expected with the whale.

First we hit up Home Depot for the materials, which consisted of one 4 by 2 sheet of plywood (which cost about $10.50) and a can of Minwax dark walnut stain (which was just over $5, but we used very little of it, so I'm calling that the other 50 cents in our $11 whale).

Then we came home and I set to work sketching out a whale on the plywood. I'd spent a bit of time googling and looking at whale outlines and practicing drawing little ones to use as a template. I was a little intimidated by the prospect of free handing such a big whale--to the point where we briefly considered going to Dave's school and using a projector there to blow my little practice whales up big. But leaving the house seemed like too much trouble, so I went with the just drawing it on the plywood plan. My original whale vision was longer and skinnier than what I wound up with. The proportions of the plywood forced me to either make a fatter whale or a less tall whale, and I wanted her tall enough to take up most of the space above the board and batten.

Apparently, I made faces like this while I drew her. There was much erasing and redrawing to try to get it just how I wanted. The tail was especially tricky.

And then Dave said, "umm, which of these lines am I supposed to cut on?" And suggested that perhaps I should go back with a marker and make just ONE whale outline for him to cut out. Gah. So demanding!

Then Dave took her down to the basement, got out the jigsaw, and started cutting.

We are very gendered in our whale-making division of labor. When I was in sixth grade, everyone had to take a six week "industrial arts" class. When it was time for me to use the power saw, I was so freaked out I was shaking, and everyone came over to stare at me and ask, "what's wrong with HER?!" And, to this day, a power screwdriver is about as hard core as I'm comfortable getting with power tools. I can't even watch Dave use the saw. I took this picture and then ran away.

Dave apologized because cutting the line for the mouth was a little tricky, and the whale wound up smiling at us a little. But I think it's awesome. Who wants a grumpy whale?

Whale outline!

Then he sanded down the edges with the power sander.

Okay, so the original plan was that I would put a coat of stain on the whale, then I would paint it a light gray with my DIY chalk paint, then I would go back and distress it to let some of the stain show through.

Only then I started to put the stain on and immediately loved it that way.

I waited until the next day when it was dry and held it up to the wall to make sure, but, yeah....I totally changed my mind about the paint. There's a LOT of painted wood in the nursery already, and I really like the one natural wood thing to give the room a little punch. And I like the look of stained wood against the Newburg Green. Also, less chance to mess the whale up if I eliminate one of the steps!

We considered a few different options for hanging the whale, but, since it was going to hang directly over our tiny baby, we decided we weren't really comfortable with anything less than attaching it directly to the wall with heavy duty anchor screws, even though this meant drilling holes in our fresh whale. Dave even went with two of the 400 pound anchor screws for good measure. We didn't weigh the whale, but I'm reasonably sure it's less than 800 pounds.

Gus was really sad that we covered that one hole up, because it kind of looked like the whale's eye.

Dave hung it up, countersunk the screws, filled them in with wood putty, then sanded and stained over them. You can see where they are if you know where to look, but they're not, I don't think, glaringly  obvious.

And, one more time, the finished whale!

We decided she was a girl and named her Martha, after Martha's Vineyard.

Full nursery reveal is here

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A Blue, Orange, and Gray, Not Overwhelmingly Sea Creature-y Nursery: The Reveal

This nursery has a theme. I know that I'm supposed to be all, "no way. I'M a grown-up, and I'm going to spend plenty of time in this room, too, and the sooner my kid learns that the world doesn't owe him a whimsical bedroom, the better off he'll be." But I am a grown-up who appreciates themes. Seriously, I'm about five minutes away from permanently recreating Miss Havisham's wedding feast in my dining room. I did try to keep the theme somewhat....restrained, however. I am very mature like that.

We first found out we'd be needing a nursery at nearly exactly the same time we moved into this house. Sadly, pretty much the only thing on our wish list that the Boxy Colonial lacked was a fifth bedroom. Milo and Gus are content to share a room for the moment, but the fourth bedroom was being used for a guest room/office, and we weren't ready to give that up just yet.  So, ultimately, the solution we landed on was dividing our ginormous master bedroom in two and using half of it for a nursery for the time being. Eventually the baby will likely move into the guest room, and either we'll be guest room-less or we'll be ready to finish the basement by then.

I've had a pinterest board with nursery ideas for quite awhile, and a lot of the plans I made way back then actually came to fruition in some form or another. You can read about my nursery musings back in October here to see how things have evolved. But we didn't start actually DOING stuff until Thanksgiving. Which means we went from this:

Pretty much a storage room for stuff we didn't know what else to do with....to a finished nursery in about seven weeks. We seem to work well with a deadline. And without a newborn. We'll see how things go from here on out. More slowly. Is my guess.

A few notes before I share the overabundance of photos with you.

*I feel like I should say meta things about what aesthetic I was going for or whatever. But I have no such things to say. I wanted the ocean/sea creatures theme to be there, but not overwhelming. I wanted something that worked with the other half of the room, which is our bedroom and not as whale-heavy, but I still wanted whimsical and fun for the nursery side.

*I am always a little surprised at how rooms come together when I start them from scratch. They seem to wind up more modern and streamlined than I would expect myself to make them.

*This room was a beast to photograph. It finally occurred to me that this is probably mostly because the paint color is so dark. So my method was to take WAY too many pictures, at different times of day, with different lenses, then spend forever sorting through them to find the least awful ones....and hope for the best.

*Nurseries are so much fun. I think I need four more babies just so I can keep decorating nurseries. Just kidding, Dave. No more babies. I'm sure a toddler room will be almost as fun to decorate. Sigh.

So on with the tour! I'll note where all this stuff came from and give links to individual projects (there are a LOT of projects) as I go along.

Here's a view looking straight in from the master bedroom side of the room. Dave and I made the no-sew curtains with gray and orange see saw fabric from Carousel Designs. I talk about making them here. The paint that made the room so much trouble to photograph, but which I love anyway, is Benjamin Moore's Newburg Green.

The bookcase was a garage sale find many years ago. We gave it a fresh coat of paint for its new life in the nursery and covered a piece of cardboard cut to fit the back with squid fabric from Spoonflower. Read about the bookcase project here. The lamp is from Target (ordered online). The prints above the bookcase are from Studio Tuesday via Etsy.

I found the fish at TJ Maxx. He's supposed to hold a votive candle, but open flames and babies don't really mix, so he'll just sit around looking cute instead.

The stuffed seal is from Ikea. The kids bought me the Alcatraz snowglobe when they (and Dave) went to California last spring and left me home to paint the kitchen cabinets in the old house. Gus thinks it's too scary for the baby, but I think he'll be okay.

Moving right along...it's the next wall! Along with the corner. The rocker is a Poang rocker from Ikea. The dresser was Dave's dad's, then Dave's, and then has been in all of our kids' nurseries or bedrooms. We repainted it and gave it some fancy new whale drawer pulls from D. Lawless Hardware. I talk more about that here.

I can't remember where I got the paper lanterns. Uhh....I googled "paper lanterns" and ordered them from one of the online stores that popped up. Originally, these were supposed to go over the changing table. But then I had to move the mobile there so that nothing would cover up our friend the whale, so we put these here instead.

I found the "Seals & Sea Lions" book at the thrift store. The Nantucket book is from the real Nantucket, where Dave and I went on our honeymoon. Gus bought the plush sea lion for me/the baby for Christmas (aww!). The starfish were at TJ Maxx. The lamp is from Target; it used to be in Milo's room at our old house. And the diver's mask was a happy find at Hobby Lobby. I kind of love it. And it was half off.

The photos (in Ikea Ribba frames) are ones I've taken over the years on our family trips to Cape Cod. More about them and better views of them here.

Gus' sea lion again. Aww!

Continuing on....here's the room divider curtain. The curtains are from Ikea, with ceiling mount curtain rods from Wal-mart. More about how we did that here. And the dresser started out ugly. Read about how we made it prettier (and added the legs to it) here.

I made the mobile and talked about how I did it here.

The hardest part to photograph, because that whale wants to blend right into the wall, particularly once the camera is finished dealing with all the white board and batten. Anyway, it's the last wall of the nursery! The crib is the Sundvik crib from Ikea. The lamp is the Stella Floor Lamp, on sale from Urban Outfitters (there's no overhead light in this half of the room, hence the three lamps). You can't tell, but the crib sheet is very soft. It is from Target's website.

DIY projects on this wall include the no-sew crib skirt to match the curtains, which I talk about here, the board and batten, which I talk about at great length here, and the whale, which there is not yet a separate post about, but that's coming up. Her name is Martha.

The pillow is from Ikea. Oh, and you can kind of see how nice and soft the crib sheet is. If it would only get below 70, it would be very cozy for the baby to sleep on.

What the whale actually looks like. It was the last thing we did in here (less than a week before my due date! Cutting it close!), so it's the thing I'm currently the most in love with. I'll write up a separate post about how we made it either later this week or, if I have a baby soon, then....just....later and tell you how we made her. It was easier and less fraught with worry and trouble than I expected.

I don't want to stop writing about the nursery, but I think I'm all finished now. I still can't quite believe it all actually came together before the baby was born. And I don't know quite what to do with myself now that it's finished. I really can think of LOTS of things to do with myself (and my house), but none of them seem quite as fun or gratifying right now as making, say, a big wooden whale.

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At Last! Board and Batten, or: Where the Caulk Was: Sort of a Tutorial

I will get to that part--where the mysteriously missing caulk was hiding--later on.

I had this idea in my head that putting up board and batten would take up most of a leisurely Saturday, and then we'd be all finished and move on to other exciting nursery tasks like making a whale. I guess all the tutorials I read entitled things like, "Board and Batten: A Tutorial in Seventeen Parts" should have clued me in.

It's not that any one step in putting up board and batten is particularly onerous; it's just that there are so many steps, and each one could be done in any one of fourteen different ways, so there are...whatever fourteen times so many is decisions to make before you can even really get started. And the overabundance of tutorials online that should make the whole thing easier kind of....doesn't, because everyone has done their board and batten a little bit differently, and yet they all look pretty similar (and good) in the end....it's like picking between eight different shades of white paint, which is maybe why I never paint things white.

So we spent a few weeks reading tutorials and procrastinating before finally jumping in. Let me summarize a few of the decisions we had to make before we could get started:

1. How high should the board and batten go? I've seen people go all different ways with this. Some people keep it low, often because they're working with an existing chair rail. Some people go all the way up to the ceiling. We opted for roughly 2/3 of the way up, or around 5 1/2 feet (with 8 foot ceilings).

2. How wide should all the boards be? Again, huge variations abound! Our vertical boards are 2  inches, and our horizontal boards on top are 4 inches.

3. What about the spacing between the vertical boards? It seemed like the ones I liked best online were between, say, 12 and 14 inches apart. Or so. This is an area where you kind of have to play around with how it looks in your particular room and also with what works best with whatever outlets, doors, etc. you have to work around. I think it's pretty rare that you'll be able to space them exactly evenly when you work around everything, so be prepared to move a board an inch here and another one an inch there. We ended up with our spaced as close to 13 1/2 inches as we could get them.

4. What kind of material should you use? You can use real wood, but MDF seems to be the most popular choice. And then you have to decide whether to buy pre-primed and pre-cut planks or to buy sheets  (Lowes carries 5 by 8 foot, so Dave did some fancy figuring to decide how to get the boards we needed out of those) and have them cut at the store (or cut them at home yourself, if you don't like yourself very much). Buying sheets will save you a lot of money but cost you more time in painting/priming (which is the most time consuming part of the project). But it's so much cheaper that it's really hard not to go that route, unless it's a very small project. Our wall was 29 feet long, minus one door, so we went with sheets, cut into planks. The guy at Lowes did not seemed thrilled about making so many cuts. Too bad, dude--it's your JOB. He's just lucky no one made him prime and paint all the damn things.

5. What kind of paint to use? See above for how choosing white paint flusters me more than it should. First we bought the super cheap, pre-mixed Olympic white paint at Lowes. This was a mistake. It was like water. I believe I've heard somewhere that some people say you get what you pay for. So we ended up using this more or less as a primer, because after we'd slapped a whole bunch of coats of paint on the wall and the boards with it, it still needed more. So we returned to Lowes and bought the still pre-mixed, but considerably more expensive fancy Valspar white paint. And this was much better. But it took a LOT of coats of paint to cover everything still.

6. When should you paint, anyway? I read over and over again that painting the wall and the boards before you put them on the wall will save you a ton of time. So I was surprised at how many people didn't do that. And then I wasn't surprised that in most of those descriptions, the people were like, "and we're STILL finishing up the paint, 11 months later!" Or something like that. So we painted first. Wall with a roller and boards with a smaller foam roller. Then all you have to do after is touch up where you've put nails and caulked and all that.

7. And what to do about that part where the vertical board hits the baseboard? I saw a bunch of different ideas here, too (because most of the time, your baseboard comes in at an angle at the top, so that the vertical boards would hang out over the top of them). Some people take the existing baseboard off and put flat boards there instead (so it matches the horizontal board on top). One blogger went along and cut off the slanting in part of her baseboard so that what was left behind would be flat along the top. We decided to cut the bottoms of the vertical boards off at a 45 degree angle, so they'd slope in to meet the baseboard. Apparently this is fairly easy and straightforward if you have a circular saw. I wouldn't know. Dave did it.

8. What about attaching it to the wall? Funny you should ask that. Remember my promise to tell you where the caulk was hiding? Okay, so we decided to use finishing nails plus liquid nails to attach all the boards. This seemed to go swimmingly...we slathered the liquid nails on, then I held it up while Dave put three nails per board in. Then a few days later I spent all day looking around for the caulk....and we finally found it....in the caulk gun that we used to put the "liquid nails" up. Oops. So it turns out we used caulk plus nails to put the boards up. I hope that works. So far, so good.

Okay, so I'll try to speed up from here, because, really, once you've decided all that stuff, things get fairly straightforward. Except for the part where you have to find 400 extra hours for all the painting.

A bunch of boards in our basement, where they all got painted:

Here they are with their 45 degree angles:

Starting to put the horizontal boards up. This involved lots of measuring and checking things with a level.

The first vertical board is up!

Making progress. Once the painting was done, things went pretty fast.

So this is what the boards look like at the bottom where they hit the baseboard. I'm pretty pleased with it.

Finished except for caulking the seams and touching up the paint. Please excuse that dresser, acting like it's all "styled" because it has 3 things on it. It was messy, and I threw a bunch of stuff on the bed to take the picture. It will be prettier when we get to that side of the room...soon!

So in that picture, you can sort of see where the cracks are where we put the boards together. So then, when I finally found it, I went back through and filled in the cracks with caulk. If you'll recall, I fretted about this a good bit, but it wound up taking all of ten minutes and was super easy. I just squirted the caulk in, then wiped the excess off with my finger. Then a couple of hours later, I went back through and painted over all the caulk and nail holes (another ten minutes. And don't forget to get paintable caulk).

And now it's officially all finished!

Couple of things I thought of and am editing to add:

*Cost: Dave says he only bought one of the 5 by 8 boards, and it cost about $25 + around $7 for all the cuts. Nails were $3, then a few bucks for caulk and liquid nails (umm, although we didn't actually use the liquid nails). The biggest expense was actually the paint, since we used nearly a full 2 gallons. One can of cheap paint and one can of expensive: around $40 all together.

*I also forgot to mention that Dave sanded down all the MDF before it went up on the wall.

*And I forgot to say that the MDF was 1/2 inch thick.

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