The Interior DIYer
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Nursery plans – part 1

Before I share the exciting side of my design ideas for the nursery, I first have to tackle the far less exciting side that is the spare bedroom as it is now and getting it from this point to an empty room. Sounds easy? It’s not as straight forward as I’d like it to be thanks to us being renters living with our landlords furniture and not having as much freedom as a homeowner would have. But I’ve successfully managed to come up with a solution to almost every problem.

Feel free to allow your eyes to glaze over while you scroll as chances are you won’t find the below particularly interesting. It’s a solution I’ve come up with as a renter so I figured maybe one other person out there might find it interesting, so here it is … 

1. DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING – and everything else on the walls. I’ve found so many cute things to hang up and have some fun ideas, but that can’t start until I repaint.
2. REPAINT – this is an obvious step but it’s something that needs to be done before I start working on the nursery. I just need to decide on a colour.
3. UNDER THE BED – four years’ worth of college work and the dismantled shelves from our living room [as in the ‘before’ photo here] have been expertly rammed stored under our spare bed. Out of sight, out of mind! That is, until we get to number 5 below … 
4. DECLUTTER – I’ll be doing another sweep of what we have at the moment and either selling or donating as much as I can. I’ve gotten rid of a lot over the past two years but thanks to nesting hormones, I want to get rid of everything unnecessary. 
5. DISASSEMBLE THE SPARE BED – since we’re renters and the bed in the spare bedroom is our landlord’s, we can’t get rid of it. My plan is to stack the spare mattress on top of the mattress in our bedroom, disassemble the spare bed and store it under our bed. I also have to relocate the college work and shelves that are currently under the spare bed to under our bed and hope it all fits.

6. CHAOTIC CUPBOARDS – possibly scarier than under the bed; the cupboards in our spare bedroom. They hold about half of everything we own. Our Christmas decorations, more college work, my wedding dress, a printer, our landlords artwork, old Playstations, summer / winter clothes, one hundred years of wrapping paper that’s too pretty to use and mementos to name a few. All have to be ruthlessly culled. 
7. MOAR SHELVES – this random set of shelves belongs to our landlord and sit awkwardly at the entrance to our spare bedroom creating a bottle-neck to the room [which will be v. awkward when bebe comes]. We keep our DVD collection on them at the moment, but I’m hoping to move the DVDs elsewhere and put these shelves within the cupboard [no. 6 above] so the shelves can house overflow bebe stuff that we won’t have room for in the room itself.

If you’ve read this far, I commend you! If you haven’t, I don’t blame you. That’s the plan I have so far to get the spare bedroom ready for its new design and subsequently, new occupant. I cannot wait to share the plans I have for the nursery! Not to mention get started on decluttering and organising and assembling tiny bebe things. 
And for good measure, I’ll end on an awkward selfie … 
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Lately + a bit of a rant

It’s been so long [for me] since I last blogged. It’s been 6 weeks since I last published something here and considering I’ve been blogging at least twice a week for the past 5 years, going 6 weeks without doing anything has been weird and a little scary. Work has been really busy as well as most of our spare time in general these days, so by the time I get home I usually have zero cares left to work on anything. 

Actually, truth be told, the reason I haven’t done much blogging is because anything I want to do around our apartment I can no longer do by myself. Which is a world of frustrating levels of bullshit. Yes, I realise I’m pregnant and I have to be careful, but I’m not someone who has ever had to wait for someone else to help me before jumping into a project [bar electrical stuff]. I’m not dainty and I don’t value my looks very much so in the past if something needed to be done, I’d get stuck in regardless of the physical harm that may come my way. I mean, when I swapped the two beds in our apartment, one of the beds [now in our bedroom] weighed, I shit you not, about 300lbs. Maybe even 400lbs. It’s solid wood and it needed to be turned on its side to be able to move it down the hallway. I did all of that solo. But now. Now that I’m with child. Oh sweet baby deity … Never have I been treated so much like a tiny injured bird and it makes me feel a spectrum of useless. I do realise I have to take it easy for the next few months, and I’m trying, but I really cannot wait until I am allowed to move something really heavy or do something by myself. It’s tough as when I get an idea I have to stop myself and say, “No, hold on. I have to wait for Robert to come home to move that for me.” So that’s partly why I haven’t been able to do much around our apartment, and subsequently, not been able to blog much. 
It’s a big learning curve for me so I’m trying to get used to asking for help. As of this week I’ve had a burst of wanting to get things done so the mahogany mirror that’s been sitting in the corner of our bedroom for more than a year [as seen here] is finally up and hanging in our hallway! Special thanks to Dad DIYer and Robert who hung it up earlier this week [I wasn’t allowed to help as it’s very heavy]. I’ve also been taking some pictures for a very exciting feature coming up so I’ve bought a few new things I’ve been eyeing for a while. One of them being this brass candle holder from Article, a few peonies from Appassionata and some new bedding … 

ME –          “I want to look at new sheets for our room today.”
ROBERT –  “We need new sheets? But we already have sheets and a duvet on the bed.“
ME –          “We need new sheets. Sheet-sheets.”
ROBERT –  *Total confusion*

We got new sheets in the end.  

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Thrifty things – copper jelly moulds

Over the weekend I had some time to walk one of my favourite Dublin charity shop routes. I was on the lookout for nothing in particular, but kind of also had my radar possible nursery furniture. I didn’t find any furniture, however I did find these absolutely adorable copper jelly moulds. I’m super sappy these days so the heart-shaped piece jumped out at me immediately as well as the smaller mould. They were both marked as €1 each [!!!] in Age Action so I couldn’t not get them. 

I’m fairly certain they’re not vintage as they’re quite light and are actually more of a rose-gold colour than copper in real life [they look very much copper in these pictures]. I think the heart shaped mould would look really lovely hanging up in the baby’s room and the smaller one for holding all kinds of tiny baby related nonsense on a shelf. 

We’ll have to buy some brand new pieces for the nursery [cot, bedclothes etc], but for the most part I’m really hoping to find as many second hand pieces as possible. I have a vague idea of furniture, layout and colours at the moment, but I have yet to sit down and see if it will all work together. I’m feeling really good these days so I want to get stuck in painting and assembling and fussing over baby stuff! I figure I should start sooner rather than later before my energy levels drop back to non-existent.