Steve and I are fortunate to have a house with quite a few bedrooms. The kitchen is tiny, the floor plan is broken up inefficiently, but for purposes of creating space for a baby to come live with us, we're in good shape.
Steve's wonderful parents came to visit us for 10 days, and are helping us turn the basement into an exercise/entertainment area and the current exercise/entertainment room into a nursery. I spent the first couple of days of their visit in a panic, as it seemed that rooms were getting demolished more than remodeled and the list of Things To Do grew ever longer. Steve finally talked me off the ledge, and reminded me that (a) doing it yourself is a lot more satisfying (not to mention cheaper) than hiring a professional; (b) doing it yourself means it will take twice as long as you anticipate, and will involve three times as many swear words; and (c) the baby won't care if the basement isn't finished by August. At that point, I decided to relax, let go of my control-freaky tendencies, and let the Freiburgers work their home improvement magic.
The results have exceeded my wildest expectations. Sure, the simple utility sink in the laundry room took almost a week to install. But the stylish new lights now turn on (and off!), the drywall is almost completely hung, and the basement is slowly turning into a wonderful new functional space in our house, rather than simply a repository for boxes and beer-making equipment.
And the real masterpiece is upstairs. For months, Steve has been musing about creating a mural depicting a scene from "Where The Wild Things Are." We both adore Maurice Sendak's magical illustrations, and loved the idea of bringing the wild rumpus into Crusher's room. But one of us (and that would be the pregnant, cranky, control-freaky one) thought that it would just be too much to undertake painting an intricate mural in the midst of basement remodeling, floor refinishing, and furniture relocating (not to mention gestating). But Steve insisted that it could be done, and promised that, while it might take him most of the next three months, he would have the mural finished by the time Crusher makes his or her appearance. And so, I relented, figuring I could always paint over the partially completed mural if necessary.
My mother-in-law and I painted the room a happy, bright sky blue base color. Then, using a technique I learned from some of my imaginary internet friends, we used an overhead projector to beam transparencies of the appropriate WTWTA pages onto the wall. On Tuesday, my mom and Steve's worked together to trace the images onto the wall, and then spent the rest of the week painting them.
They took some liberties with the colors to make them more nursery-friendly and to mesh better with the overall room color (and to dress one of the creatures in Packers garb), and they improvised a bit on the grass and the trees.
They embellished Max's crown with rhinestones, and his pajamas with buttons:
And they finished the whole darn thing.
This morning, apparently having spent most of the night thinking about the mural, my mom called with an idea. What if we carried the treetops around the rest of the room, to create a unified border? Steve and I approved, and Eileen was willing to make it happen.
This finishing touch really pulls the whole room together!
With the mural completed, Steve is now free to spend the next three months drywalling the basement reading up on baby care climbing and cycling. More important, it gives us a one-of-a-kind nursery, filled with tangible evidence of Crusher's grandmothers' amazing talents, and their great love for this little person-to-be. I'm so, so glad I didn't talk them out of doing it.
