Sarah 101: Episode 2, Trish’s Nursery

For all of you out there who can’t watch Sarah 101, I’m going to post a recap after each episode. So if you want to know what Sarah & Tommy have been up to each week, be sure to check in right here every Wednesday morning! (I took pictures of my TV again, so excuse the not-so-great quality.)

On this week’s episode, Sarah & Tommy created a sophisticated nursery fit for a true blue baby boy.

Their starting point was this boldly patterned wallpaper that they put on the ceiling! I am TOTALLY diggin’ it. Why leave a ceiling plain white when you can do something fabulous with it?! Plus it’s way more interesting for a baby to look up at a beautiful patterned ceiling than a plain white ceiling.

Putting the wallpaper on the ceiling also helped hide a beam – they wrapped the wallpaper around the beam and down the walls as far as the bottom of the beam, camouflaging the beam.

And the final result:

They pulled colours from the wallpaper for the stripes on the wall behind the crib.

And they selected this modern graphic fabric for the curtains to balance the traditional wallpaper pattern.

The black ball fringe on the finished curtains is so fun :-)

The bold curtain fabric carries the eye from the stripes on the wall up to the wallpaper on the ceiling.

Double-purpose furniture is a great option for a nursery. They bought a low storage unit, had it sprayed blue, and an upholsterer made the cushion to turn the storage unit into a seating area as well.

Additional storage baskets on the shelf on the change table. Sarah chose these baskets because they’re sturdy and the bottoms won’t scratch the lacquered table the way rattan baskets would.

Sarah chose this swivel chair from Ikea instead of a typical recliner or glider. It’s a piece that can still be used once it’s no longer needed in the nursery.

What did Sarah & Tommy teach us?

1. You need a fraction of the amount of furniture that the baby furniture industry tells you that you need. Don’t spend a lot of money on a crib, you’ll only be using it for a couple of years. Buy a double-duty change table and a good dresser. Don’t go with juvenile pieces – expensive baby stuff is a waste of money. Vintage pieces painted to work with your colour scheme add character.

2. Wallpaper on the ceiling should have an all-over pattern to help hide imperfections (stripes will accentuate imperfections).

3. A blackboard is an inexpensive way to bring art into a room. They created this blackboard by painting a section of the wall with blackboard paint and framing it out with wood trim.

4. If you have a strong pattern on the ceiling, don’t use a dark colour on the walls.

5. You can frame anything to create art (Sarah and Tommy used animal flash cards). Consider framing inexpensive artwork in custom-made shadow boxes. When you hang a series of artwork, make sure that either the tops or the bottoms of all the frames are lined up with each other. In this case, Sarah lined up the bottoms and left a 3” space between each picture.

6. If you have a carpet that you have to keep, using the same colour on the wall (for example, in a stripe) will help tie the carpet colour in with the overall colour scheme.

7. Select wallpaper before fabrics. It’s much easier to match a fabric to a wallpaper than the other way around. Then select the main colour for the room, and choose the accent colour last. Use more than one hit of the accent colour. In the nursery, Sarah & Tommy chose blue as the main colour and its complementary colour, orange, as the accent colour.

8. When you can combine modern & traditional pieces in a room, tie them together with the same colour.

9. If you change ceiling lighting and the hole is too big for the new fixture, use a ceiling medallion to cover the hole.

10. Sarah’s signature design approach is to use 10-12 different fabrics in a room. In this case, the nursery has 11 different fabrics.

 

Next Wednesday will be a recap of Episode 3 – don’t miss it! And if you’re in Canada, you can watch episodes of Sarah 101 on the HGTV web site.