Since I posted about our finished nursery, I’ve had quite a few requests for a how-to for the mountain mural. So here it is! Read on for more…

Rob and I are not the most handy of people – the extent of our decorating experience before this was painting one wall of our kitchen, which resulted in some very unsightly blotches on the ceiling. So before starting the mountain mural, we weren’t filled with confidence about our DIY skills… but turns out, this is a super easy project to suit all levels of skill!

To start with, we prepped the room that was to become the nursery. After cleaning top to bottom and washing the carpet we used a primer paint on the walls to cover the existing colour (a dark grey), gave the ceiling a fresh coat of eggshell white and painted all the woodwork.

I wanted to keep the nursery gender neutral in soft pastel shades, but I didn’t want the mountain theme to look too realistic. So rather than choosing blue for the main wall colour, I went for a gentle green – Farrow & Ball’s Cromarty. It’s a beautiful green with a hint of grey and works so well to create a calming atmosphere… perfect for a nursery.

With the walls and radiator painted and dry, it was time to start plotting out the mountain range!

This is where I handed over to Rob. He sketched out his idea on paper first, then recreated the layout on the walls using masking tape. Rob came up with theee most adorable meaning for each peak – the big ones represent him, me and Baby A, and the smaller ones on the side walls are for our cats, Travis and Lily. I almost wept when he explained that bit to me!

We didn’t want the peaks to look too uniform, so we did a bit of shuffling about once the tape was up – stepping back and surveying the overall scene helped. Once we were happy with the layout Rob trimmed the excess tape, making sure the points of each mountain were sharp.

It’s really important to use a good quality decorators’ tape here – you need a really crisp line and cheaper tape will bleed. A top tip is to rub over the tape with a damp cloth to really seal the glue and make sure the paint stays where you want it to!

This is how things looked after we’d painted the main peaks and the background peaks. We gave each section two coats to ensure an even finish, waiting about 20 mins between coats. Then we waited another 20 mins before crossing our fingers and peeling off the masking tape – success! No leakage!

We stuck with Farrow & Ball colours for the mountains. I wanted soft greys with a warm tone and settled on Pavilion Grey for the background peaks and Dove Grey for the foreground peaks. I love the combination of these two colours against the pastel green.

Next step – filling in the gaps. For this part, we waited until the paint was touch-dry then lined up the masking tape with the edge of the foreground mountains, making sure to add an extra piece of tape to complete the side of the background peaks. It’s quite complicated to explain but hopefully the pics make sense!

With the masking tape in place and dampened down, we painted within the lines to complete the background mountains.

The final stage was to paint the snowy peaks – we mapped these out with more tape while waiting for the background peaks to dry a bit, then slapped on a few coats of Farrow & Ball’s Wimbourne White. We could’ve actually done this way back at step one when we painted the main foreground peaks, just by adding the additional tape then rather than painting the grey colour right to the top of each peak. But, no harm done – 3 coats and the grey was as pure as snow. 20 minutes later it was time to peel off the masking tape with fingers firmly crossed…

Tada! It worked!

We finished the mountain mural about 2 months ago and I’m still so delighted with it. It’s not totally perfect – some of the lines are a little shaky and there’s a tiny bit of cracking in the white paint because we layered it on too thickly. But none of that matters (or is even visible unless you’re up close) – it looks fantastic and I’m so proud of us DIY newbies for doing it all ourselves.

It really was a very easy project, and the finished result looks way more professional than I expected. For a couple of first-timers, I think we really smashed it! Here are a few tips if you’d like to paint your own mountain mural…

– It’s time-consuming, but don’t rush it. Set aside a full weekend and give yourself enough drying time

– Use good quality paint and decent brushes. You want an even finish without the stray brush hairs!

– Buy the best masking/decorators’ tape you can find. We found the blue stuff was the best, and a rub-over with a damp cloth strengthens the glue even more.

– Sketch out your mountain scene first and use your sketch as a reference for the wall. Don’t make it too formal or uniform, and don’t worry if your peaks aren’t perfectly straight!

Baby A’s nursery was one of the first things I started planning when I found out I was pregnant. I’m shallow, I know. But I do love an interiors project and there’s endless nursery inspiration to be found when you’re battling morning sickness and browsing Pinterest.

I went back and forth with a few different ideas before settling on a style. I didn’t want to go super girly with lots of pink, but I do actually like pink and think it works really well to create a soft, calming space. I fell in love with Emily Henderson’s blush and green nursery theme and searched high and low for an affordable alternative to that beautiful forest wallpaper, to no avail. So I toyed with decals and feature colours and printed wallpaper before discovering the mountain mural.

Our first job was to clear the room and paint. Before its nursery transformation, this room was used as Rob’s office/a storage space/a general dumping ground, so we got rid of all the clutter and cleaned top to bottom. Three of the walls were light grey and one a slightly darker shade, so we used a primer on the darker wall then went straight in with the main colour, which is Farrow & Ball’s Cromarty. It took three coats to get an even finish, then we moved on to the woodwork (Dulux’s Eggshell White wood paint) and the ceiling.

For the mountain mural, we used this tutorial and it was all very easy, if quite time-consuming. I’ll do a full post on the creation of the mural complete with progress pics, but for reference we used Farrow & Ball’s Dove Grey for the foreground mountains, Pavilion Grey for the background mountains and Wimbourne White for the snowy peaks!

With the painting done, it was time to fill the space with beautiful, beautiful stuff! Being six months pregnant and all, I wasn’t much help with the painting stage, but I SMASHED the buying stuff stage. We started with the furniture – I knew I wanted a Scandi-style cot and a chest of drawers rather than a changing table, but it took a long time to find anything in the UK. US readers, you have it so great when it comes to nursery furniture! I loved the Babyletto range at Target but they don’t ship furniture over here, so it was back to the drawing board.

I finally stumbled across the Finley cot and 3-drawer chest on the M&S website, of all places. I’d never think to look in M&S for furniture, but both pieces are really well-made and they were assembled by the delivery team – much easier than Ikea!

A little note on using a chest of drawers as a changing table – I didn’t want a wardrobe in the room, so the changing table needed to double up as somewhere to store Baby A’s clothing, too. I also wanted something sturdy and high enough that I wasn’t hunching over it every time I changed a nappy. I read loads of reviews on various ‘changing chests’ but in the end decided I didn’t really need something that was designed specifically for changing – a substantial changing mat (mine is this Cam Cam one from ScandiBorn) seems enough, especially as I’m not gonna be wandering off while my baby lies untethered, mid-change. But if, when we get going with this baby thing, I find I do need a bit more support for the mat, M&S do a changing topper. Clever!

I also wanted to add some hanging storage to the walls to create a bit of a feature – for above the changing table I used the Farg Form hooks and hanging baskets, and added these round buttons from John Lewis to display some of Baby A’s clothes.

Finding a nursing chair was another point of contention – nursing chairs are extremely ugly and I hate them all. Other than this £795 version (lol, why) I couldn’t find a single chair I liked, so I did what anyone who’s hit a wall during an interiors project would do – I went to Ikea. I’d read great things about the POANG chair for nursing purposes and at £55 it’s far more affordable than most ‘proper’ nursing chairs, so I snapped up the non-rocking version in the grey/oak colourway. It does actually rock a bit, and it’s more upright than the rocking chair which felt more useful for nursing.

To display some of Baby A’s trinkets, I copied every New Mum Instagrammer and bought some String shelves. These are seriously popular in the nursery interiors community (yep, that’s a thing) and the oak/white version matches the rest of the furniture perfectly. I don’t want lots of clutter in the nursery but these shelves are great for holding the bits and bobs I want to display, like the vintage Beatrix Potter books that were mine as a kid, the Lala Loves Decor acrylic pieces and every baby’s favourite giraffe, Sophie.

For my baby shower, my wonderful friends and family all bought Baby A their favourite book from childhood. So cute! I wanted them out for all to see, so picked up a cheap picture ledge from Ikea and sat them all on it along with the light box that seems essential for all nurseries.

Instagram has been an amazing source of cool interior brands for project nursery – I discovered Secret Holiday Co’s amazing felt banners and Holly and Teddy’s beautiful weaves during my extensive browsing.

I think the finishing touches really pull the nursery together – the felt ball rug adds a hint of pink without being super girly, and the conical lightshade from Made.com matches the wall colour perfectly. I also found these black out curtains to keep the room dark when Baby A is napping during the day (fingers firmly crossed on that one).

Finally, taking pride of place in the room, is Sven the rocking sheep. You might remember his Danish brother from our Copenhagen Airbnb – as soon as I spotted him, I knew he’d be the perfect addition to our Scandi-inspired nursery. Handmade by Danish designer Povl Kjer, these rocking sheep are really popular in Denmark and we saw them in plenty of shops but getting one back in our hand luggage would’ve been tricky. When we got back from Copenhagen I made it my mission to find a stockist in the UK and luckily discovered Gigi Brooks, who sell a range of Povl’s designs (including his amazing sheep stools!). The lovely people at Gigi Brooks sent Sven out super quickly and he was the first piece to go into the nursery. I can’t wait to see Baby A rocking away!

And so, that’s the nursery. All ready for her arrival in 5 (ish) weeks. Although she won’t go into her own room for around 6 months, I’m so glad we went through the ritual of preparing Baby A’s space, and I hope she loves it as much as we do.