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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

House Voyeur: Guthrie's Bright, Bold, Budget Nursery

One-year-old Guthrie Souza is a lucky little boy. His mom, interior designer and blogger Jana Souza of Concord, California, has created a room for him that's colorful, fun -- and all boy (just like Guthrie).

Here, Jana shares the process of creating her son's nursery:

"The initial inspiration for Guthrie's room came from the metal 'Dream' sign that we found in a store called Magnolia in downtown Benicia, California, when I was pregnant. [Editor's note: Benicia has great antiquing, too -- definitely worth a day trip if you're in the area.] The entire scale of the room was driven off of that.

For the wall colors, we did horizontal stripes on top of warm green, with a blue accent wall. The green is Benjamin Moore's Kiwi, and the blue is Benjamin Moore's Watertown. For the stripes, we used Sherwin Williams' Jonquil, Benjamin Moore's Coyote Trail, and Watertown again.

The secret to doing stripes is using painter's tape, taping very well -- especially if your walls aren't perfectly smooth -- and glazing the edges of the tape with an acrylic polyurethane; we used Benjamin Moore's Stays Clear in low lustre to avoid any shine. Make sure you use enough so that it really seals the tape and prevents any color bleeding. Stripes are not fun to do, but they are fun to have!

Next, we found pseudo-modern nursery furniture that wasn't outlandishly expensive; I love the modern cribs and other baby furniture featured at high-end retailers like Giggle -- but honestly, we can't stomach spending that kind of money for a nursery.

So I went digging through many a website and finally found a crib-and-changing-table combo from Million Dollar Baby at Walmart. It doesn't really hold a candle to the quality and finishing details of the modern designer nursery furniture that I admire -- but it works for the room, has contemporary lines, and a white-and-wood finish that pops, which is what we wanted.

The antique rocker belonged to my husband, Tony's, grandmother, and we use it daily. And I when I saw this miniature, Eames-like shell chair at a secondhand store, I just had to have it.

I'm generally not a fan of themed kids' rooms, but Tony is a real guy's guy, so I wanted something very boyish for Guthrie. Vintage airplanes were a unifying idea that worked for me. I found the vivid planes and patchwork bedding and the 'Vroom' pillow at Pottery Barn Kids. I loved the colors, and the 'Vroom' wound up being prescient -- Guthrie's always on the move!

To mix it up a bit, I added the vintage clowns and the boat on the long IKEA Lack wall shelf. They just spoke to me in thrift stores and I couldn't resist.

I love so many of the fun, modern rugs available for kids' rooms -- but again, they're very expensive. So instead, I picked up a few of these small Ringum and Roskilde rugs for less than $10 each at IKEA. The customized Radio Flyer Roadster was a first-birthday gift from Guthrie's grandpa and grandma.

For the window treatments, I decided to double up on some linen panels from IKEA and shorten them for a more casual look. I considered monogramming Guthrie's initials on each side, but then I got the idea to do multi-color, multi-sized Gs. Off I went: stencils, fabric paint, and 12 hours later I was done -- although I forgot to put plastic under the panels and now we have permanent Gs on our living room rug (nice!).

We had a blast doing Guthrie's room, and know it's going to work well for him as he grows into the little boy he's becoming."

Thanks so much for sharing your baby's room with us, Jana!