The Post about the Nursery March 16th

Ever notice home redecorating shows work on rooms bigger than most houses?

What’s so hard about that? Give me a thousand square feet for a bedroom and it’d look pretty spiffy whether I had a professional do the job or handed it off to a vagrant with a paintbrush.

Let’s see those shows tackle an 8x8 room and see how it turns out.

That’s all we had to work with once the girls abandoned their room for their soon-to-be arriving brother.

Three weeks before the birth, my firstborns son’s room was decorated in a spiffy lavender and pink scheme. In our quest to make our summer move easier on the girls, their old room had been recreated - in miniature - right down to the technique used to apply the paint.

That was a whole lot of effort for naught - not only did we have to paint over it a year later, the girls showed as much interest in it as they do the Nasdaq composite.

Financially ignorant little buggers.

As for the new room: I wanted a New York Yankees nursery, complete with a huge ‘top hat’ logo on the wall.

Strangely, my wife didn’t volunteer to paint it, and I let the concept fall to the wayside.

Sort of.

My wife came up with a plan to paint red, white, and blue stripes on the wall. This made for more of an Americana theme, but as she was quick to point out, it could easily be accented with Yankees memorabilia.

After all, there is nothing so American as the New York Yankees.

(Refresher: I stand for America, the Catholic Church, the New York Yankees, the GOP, and US Steel. Staying true to this theme, I am also the only Caucasian male to root for Apollo Creed - both times)

The horizontal stripes made the room look wider, but I can think of more pleasant ways to paint a room.

To start with, the ‘one coat’ white paint was anything but, and when I returned to the store for more I was told they were out of white paint. They would however, gladly mix some for me.

Right.

We used a laser level to tape off the different stripes, but found the ‘professional grade’ tape bled through.

Bit of a problem with label accuracy on this project.

Thinking on her feet, my wife left it largely as is, referencing some obscure rustic Americana painter.

In other words, we were sick of it and not about to start over. Still, the end result was striking, even when we added some wallpaper baseballs to a stripe.

To quote my father “I feel like I should salute when I walk in”.

We kept the girls antique dresser in the room and put my oldest’s crib back together (the middle child had used hers as a $500 teether, reducing parts to firewood).

My mother-in-law stepped in to create a wonderful, Yankees themed crib bumper. From the leftover fabric she graced us with a dresser scarf  and a throw pillow, while my Mom presented Parker with a Yankees blanket and receiving blanket.

Above the crib we spelled out Parker’s name, and on a side wall hung a picture that had been mine as a small boy.

On the wall opposite the crib, the Wall of Heroes - three framed 11x14 sepia pictures of Babe Ruth - and a bookcase snatched from oblivion that currently holds knick-knacks, among them another childhood picture and a NASCAR racer Grace made for Parker at Home Depot.

 

Will he appreciate the room? Probably not until he sees pictures years down the road. But it’s not about winning my son’s approval.

It’s about me having a Yankees room in my house.

Thanks to the Mrs for her planning and execution of the room, Jeanne Scorsone for some stellar sewing creations, Kathy Slapczynksi for her rpresents, and Tre Wagner for the use of his  laser level.