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I'm back with an update on our nursery project! This week, I want to dive a little deeper into the design process and share the floor plan we decided on, a peek at the new paint color, and reveal a very exciting feature of the room I haven't mentioned yet!

When I'm laying out a space, I always start with the most important piece of furniture and for a nursery that's of course the crib! I quickly realized that nurseries probably have the most floor plan options of any room because there isn't one large piece of furniture to work around, like the bed in a normal bedroom. Of the things you typically find in a nursery - a crib, a chair, a dresser, changing table, maybe a bookshelf - none really take up that much space. So really, I could have put the crib on any of the four walls and found a way to make the other furniture work. But because I had something special (and more permanent) planned for the focal wall, I needed to be 100% certain that I was picking the best layout that would work for the room even if we transitioned it into a room for an older child or back to a guest bedroom in the future.

Here's the layout we settled on:

While I tend to prefer the focal wall being right across from the door you enter a room from, we decided to center the crib on the longest wall instead. With this plan, we'll have two "zones" in either corner and plenty of open floor space for play. In the top right corner of the plan, we'll have the crib, glider and a round end table to make a nice spot for reading and our bedtime routine. In the bottom left, we'll have the settee and dresser/changing station with storage for toys in between. It wasn't my first though aesthetically to have the crib and the dresser so close to the door, but I think it will prove to be very functional for us when we're popping in throughout the day for diaper changes and naps. 

At the same time I was deciding on a floor plan, I was also deciding on a paint color. As I've mentioned before, in the rest of our house I've been mostly drawn to super dark or super light colors. I really wanted to challenge myself to use more of a mid-tone in this room and I think I found the perfect shade in Farrow & Ball's French Gray. In person, it reads as an understated sage green and it picks up on the shadows of the settee for a pretty tone-on-tone effect. My mother-in-law, brother-in-law and I spent an afternoon painting the room a couple of weeks ago, and even before the paint was dry I was in love! 

Now onto the surprise. Since we bought our house, I've been itching to do some type of mural to bring some old world charm into our fixer upper. As soon as I thought about doing a black and white mural behind the crib, I knew I had found the perfect way to make the nursery design really special! Walls Republic has been on my radar for a while as a great resource for modern wallpaper and murals, but did you know they also offer the option to create your own mural using any image on Shutterstock? I'm thrilled to be collaborating with them on a custom mural featuring this 19th century engraving. I'm a sucker for trees and landscapes and of the dozens of options I showed Anthony, this one was his very favorite. Since our last name is Storck, we like to think that the birds walking in the water are little storks! 

image via Shutterstock

The mural has been printed and is currently on it's way to us. I'll share more details about the process of ordering our custom mural once it's here and installed but for now, here's a little mock up I did of how it will look in the room:

So good, right?! I've been dreaming about this room for years and now that it's starting to come together... "excited" doesn't even begin to cover it! Be sure to come back next week when I'll be sharing updated progress photos and talking about what we're doing for the rooms functional needs like window treatments, storage and organization.

And don’t forget to check out the 20 featured bloggers below or right here and the rest of the guest participants here. Thanks for following along!

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