Installing Baseboards in the Nursery

Are we behind on the nursery? Ha! With Greta, we had her nursery ready with 2 months to spare. We're down to a week over here and we still haven't put the crib back together since moving our furniture back up last week. We're buckling down this week to get it done hopefully before she arrives.

First on our to-do list, before we could get to more fun things, was installing baseboards. When we tore out all of the floors, the teeny 2 3/4"-3" (varying from room to room) baseboards throughout the first floor went with them. Although we plan on tackling this project a little at a time on the main floor, we knew we wanted to install them in the nursery before our kitten gets here.

In our opinion, our standard height 8' ceilings wouldn't accommodate really tall baseboards that we're generally drawn to, so we went to Home Depot looking for something in the mid-height range that was both traditional and modern--the style we're going for around here. We found this great 4.5" option that had an extended straight base (the modern) but some nice curves up top--I'm butchering any baseboard jargon, sorry!--(the traditional). For $1.78/ft we were sold.

I gave all the pre-primed baseboards a coat of white semi-gloss paint (off the shelf Clark+Kensington Designer White) and once the paint was dry, we carefully measured each wall section and Chris made the appropriate cuts with our miter saw.

To be honest, attaching the baseboards with our finish nailer took the longest because our nailer is the worst. It constantly pops open or shoots blanks, which irritates Chris to no end--all of which slowed down the process. Needless to say, we're in the market for a new one before we tackle the baseboards elsewhere on the main floor. Besides the unreliable nail gun, the process is straight forward. Locate the stud, drive the nail through and then I take over filling in the nail holes with spackle (this is my favorite because it doesn't require sanding, doesn't shrink or crack and dries really fast) and caulking the corners and tops for a seamless look.

Which is weirdly addicting for me and highly satisfying. It's the cherry on top. While touching up my paint job on the baseboards, I also finally painted the window and door trim with the same semi-gloss white paint.

In 2 hours, we went from this:

To a fresh "after":

Now we're absolutely itching to get the baseboards in everywhere else--it finished the new floors beautifully!!--but, we have a nursery to finish first and foremost. Although, when you see where we started:

I feel a little better about our progress and how far we've come.

UPDATE: This post was written Sunday evening. Monday morning, at about 3:00, Jules went into labor and as of this writing (5:40am Mountain time) we are in the hospital getting ready to have a baby. Holy crap... - Chris