Nesting

Nesting has been rather difficult for me. We weren't planning on having kids just yet (have I mentioned that yet?) and we're still tenants, living in an apartment. Granted, a very cute apartment:

We live on the top floor of this house in downtown Claremont, also a very cute locale. Actually, until three and a half months ago, we lived in the right-hand side of the downstairs bit of the house. The house, originally built in 1925, is divided into three apartments: the downstairs is split down the middle, and the upstairs is one big lovely apartment. We moved upstairs when we found out I was pregnant (since our upstairs neighbor happened to be moving, quite conveniently), not wanting to share a thin wall with neighbors with a squawking baby.

Not that Tiny will squawk. Tiny will never squawk. (Please, Tiny?)

So now we live upstairs. When we tell people that we moved upstairs because I was pregnant, they usually ask, "Oh, so you have two bedrooms now?"

Well, no. But we do have ... nooks.

Observe:

This is the nook off our bedroom; it's actually the jutting-out bit of the house that you can see in the photo of our house's exterior. Originally, we planned on just keeping Tiny in there. We were going to get a smaller crib on wheels, so we could move it around the nook and out to the living room if Tiny ended up actually squawking, or something. But... the crib I liked was over $900 (of course), and then a family from church went and gave us a crib, and we realized just how large cribs actually are.

So we decided to convert our handy Secret Storage Closet into a nursery.

Observe:

Notice anything?

How about now?

See? Secret Storage Closet. That's right, we're going to be keeping our baby in a closet. Rejoice, Bess. You won't be the only closest-dweller soon.

But there was a catch, see. We used our storage closet as a storage closet. It was full of all kinds of stuff, like an air mattress and sleeping bag for visitors (please? visitors?), Eric's longboard, papers and photos from high school, my scrapbooking supplies, old clothes we aren't ready to get rid of yet, our ironing board, Eric's tools ... you get the idea. So we decided to move all that junk to our Even Secreter Storage Closet, which is hidden inside our Secret Storage Closet.

The house was built in 1925, remember? It's got all sorts of little quirks.

Our Even Secreter Storage Closet is pretty small, though. While our Secret Storage Closet is actually the size of a tiny room, our Secreter Storage Closet is smaller than most storage closets. So we had to get shelving of some variety to hold our junks.

This is where nesting became difficult. Shelving, of any variety, costs money. The summer is our poorest time of year. So we decided to wait until Eric's grant money arrived to convert the Secret Storage Closet into a nursery.

That's why I've been throwing all my nesting energies (and those ain't no joke, people -- it happens) into making things like baby shoes and crochet sock monkeys (Mr. Monkey, by the way, didn't get nearly as much traffic as I think he deserves... perhaps because I neglected to mention that I made him myself).

This weekend, however, we finally cleaned out our Secret Storage Closet to begin the conversion:

(This photo was actually taken from our porch. See, our Secret Storage Closet actually has two secret entrances -- one from our bedroom, shown above, and this one from our porch. Here, Eric is moving things onto the shelf in our Secreter Storage Closet -- that's the open door you see. The entrance from our bedroom is directly across from that open door.)

Once we got everything cleaned out and the place all swept up, we realized that we had another nesting problem:

This tiny room is butt-ugly.

It could be worse. The shelves are actually rather cute, or will be once they're covered with cute baby things. There's a window, and the floors are hardwood, like the rest of the apartment.

But still, I have my work cut out for me. Obviously, the first thing I would love to do is paint. Being tenants, though, that's not really an option. It may be only a storage closet, but our landlady is french, and gets dramatic over things like hanging cafe lights on our porch (this is still a battle).

Not only is this room ugly, but it's also rather rough, being a storage closet:

There's the horrific florescent lights, the odd grating over the shelf, the awkward "baseboard," the random plank (?) nailed in the corner of the wall. What the what are these elements doing here?

Not only rough, but hazardous:

The hardwood floor simply doesn't extend all the way to the wall for about a four-foot stretch. It's like someone cut out a four-foot-by-one-inch segment of the floor, either because he was high or simply destructive. Odd?

Underneath this odd overhang in the ceiling (complete with empty air duct vent, lined with classy aluminum), is this dangerous-looking, mysterious metal projectile, of which we cannot figure out the use to save our lives.

Whatever it is, it's right at head level for anyone a quarter of an inch taller than Eric.

So clearly, I have my work cut out for me. Stay tuned. I've started brainstorming a list of things to do to the place, but suggestions are welcome!