When we first moved into our home the walls and ceiling in every room were painted the same “crumb cookie” off-white color, and had no millwork beyond the standard window and door trim. Our smaller guest room stayed that way for years until I found out I was pregnant with our first child, a sweet baby girl, and I couldn’t wait to create a special room for her! After seeing this nursery designed by Jillian Harris, I knew that I wanted to add a similar tall board and batten treatment to her room. I also dreamed of incorporating blush pinks into the room (in case she doesn’t like pink as she gets older, I wanted to use it while I had the chance!) and finding a way to add some sparkle. This new light fixture accomplished just that, and was by far my favorite find for her room- it feels so classic, too, which I just love!
The final design for our daughter’s room included 2/3 height white wainscoting to match our window and door trim, and the prettiest, soft blush pink wall color above! Even though it’s not ideal to choose a paint color based solely off of what you see on your computer screen (every screen is different, and lighting in every home/photo is different too!) I found this pink color on Pinterest, and actually loved it just as much in person as I did in the photo I had seen! The color is Pink Bliss by Benjamin Moore, and I even used it to paint an old wood bookshelf that we added to her room.
To add the board and batten wainscoting, we first removed our existing baseboards and calculated a layout of vertical battens that would have relatively equal spacing on each wall and around the room. We then used 1×4 MDF for the vertical battens and upper horizontal rail, and 1×6 MDF for the new lower rail/baseboard. To finish it off, I also found a small detail molding at home depot that we added as a cap. We attached the MDF boards with liquid nails construction adhesive, but if I could do it over I wouldn’t have used any glue! We have since upgraded the wainscoting in this room, and the outer layer of drywall was destroyed when I removed the glued-on 1x boards. You can instead attach the boards to the wall by nailing in at opposite angles, to create an ‘X’ where the nails overlap. This will keep the board from pulling off of the wall, even if you are not nailing into studs.
The last project I completed for her room was this flower mobile. I had seen so many pretty mobiles on Esty, but it was hard to tell if the flowers would be just the right colors to complement the other pieces in her room. I found everything for this mobile in one trip to Michaels, and it was a relatively easy project that I really enjoyed creating. I hand-picked the flowers to pull on the colors from the wall and play mat, and also introduced a soft orange/peach color. We hung it above her changing table, and it was the perfect finishing touch to pull the room together!
We completed this room in 2017, but since then it has been totally transformed yet again and is now our little guy’s room (stay tuned for that blog post!). This room will always have a special place in my heart though because it was the first room in our home that I fully designed. It confirmed for me how much I really enjoyed and appreciated making these changes to our home, to make it feel extra special and more like “ours!”
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