In case you missed it, I'm currently guest participating in the One Room Challenge making over our former guest bedroom into a nursery for our daughter -- who's due in just 6 more weeks! You can read my first week's post here and my week two update right here. 

And if you just found this post from the ORC page, Hi! I'm Stevie, an interior designer, thrift store regular, kind of outdoorsy wife and soon-to-be mama! My husband, Anthony and I are slowly renovating our 1903 fixer upper in York County, Pennsylvania. I'd describe my style as eclectic, traditional and country with a little bit of modern thrown in to keep things fresh! You can see more of our house right here.

In my last update, I talked you through the layout of the space and gave you a peek of the new paint color (French Gray by Farrow & Ball) and the custom mural that will be installed on the wall behind the crib! This week, I snapped some updated progress photos so you can see how the various elements of the room are starting to come together now that we're at the halfway point of the challenge. 

Won't the mural be so dreamy on this wall? It's been delivered so we just need to make a trip to Lowe's for the molding to trim it out with and pick a day to hang it. The wooden chair is a stand-in until we find a nice glider and the pillow covers will change too. I just ordered this one from H&M for the room! And don't worry, the pillow in the crib is for decorative/photoshoot purposes only. Once our little girl is here and sleeping in the crib, that pillow will live on the settee on the other side of the room. I was giving it some time to decide but I think I do want to paint the inside of her bedroom door the same color as the walls so it blends in like the closet door. Of course, I'm hoping to replace all of our boring hollow-core doors with solid wood paneled doors from a local architectural salvage shop someday, but that's a project for another time!

Anthony hung these woven wood shades as soon as the paint was dry and the round basket is a new addition! She doesn't have many toys yet (I'm sure that will change quickly!) so I might store some extra blankets in there in the meantime. And you can see some of the art I've been collecting for the space in the corner. I'll talk more about that in just a minute! This is where my room progress photos devolved into a Chloe photoshoot. But really. With that face, who could blame me? 

Back to art! To be honest, choosing art for the space has been a bit of a challenge for me. I don't want to take away from the mural but I do want the room to have the cozy, collected feel that I love. I'm still not exactly sure what I want to do above the settee or next to the chair but I plan to do a small gallery wall above the dresser. Gallery walls are notoriously tough to plan and put together! So I've gone the route of going through things I already had and picking up a few thrifted and vintage pieces over the last several months. I'll probably collect even a little more but won't end up using more than 5 or 6 pieces in the final configuration. Here are the options I have so far:

On the left, I have a piece by artist (and former co-worker of mine) Linda Rugel-Swanson that I got a few years ago and just LOVE! Below that is an Audobon bookplate that I got from this Etsy shop. I had to, not only for the beautiful colors but the fact that it's a wood stork. Obviously our last name is Storck, but also Anthony's family when Anthony's family emigrated from Germany, they opened a lumberyard in Baltimore called the Storck Lumber Company. Next is a pretty floral canvas and pressed flower I found during two different trips to Salvation Army. And after that are a lovely card from our baby shower, my favorite Emily Jeffords print ever (that I got to purchase from her in person at a craft market in South Carolina), a book of Whittier poetry that's falling apart but that I plan to save some pages from to use as art, and a canvas from our first anniversary photos with Savannah Smith Photography. 

Because I want my gallery wall to look like it was collected over time (which really, it is!) I got the idea to measure all of the art I had collected and take a list to Salvation Army to see what I could find in the way of frames. I found some really great options, and most of them were just 99 cents! I'm excited to play around with arrangements and see what works best. I'm considering painting the lighter wood frame for more contrast, but I'll just have to see once the final configuration starts coming together. 

In addition to the frames, this past week I found a lot of smaller items like a plug-in sconce for next to the glider, a bookshelf, drawer organizers, curtains, the diaper pail and a few other odds and ends. The biggest things left on our to-do list is to hang the mural and trim around it, install picture rail moulding for some historic charm and find a glider. I'd say we're in pretty good shape for being at the halfway point. And at 34 weeks, my nesting instincts are only getting stronger! Our other projects for this week are to finish packing the hospital bag and install our carseat base. The weeks are really winding down until our daughter will be born! In between client work and the One Room Challenge, I'm also working on a third trimester update post that I'll be sharing soon, if you're into that sort of thing. 

Remember you can 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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