 Eilean Donan Castle | The Inspiration. About a month after we learned she was pregnant, Katie and I took a vacation to the United Kingdom. We spent the first part in London, where Katie got to see a day of Wimbledon, and then made our way up to Scotland, where I would attend a conference in Edinburgh. Before the confernce began, we took a three-day bus trip to the Highlands. There were plenty of sights to see from the bus, but plenty of time to think as well, and I began to think about what I wanted to do with the nursery we were going to need. I had always wanted to paint a mural, and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity.
 Scone Palace | One of the stops on our sight seeing tour was the castle Eilean Donan. Eilean Donan is one of Scotland's most picturesque castles, and can even be seen in the movie Highlander. It's not very fancy, but it has a certain majesty, and I decided the centerpiece of the mural would be a castle based upon it. Much of what you see here made it to the final work; the three distinct sections, the general shape, the bridge leading to it, and its proximity to a lake.  Leeds Castle | On the other hand, it was a bit drab and not ``fantastic'' enough for a child's bedroom. So I embelished. From Scone Palace, which we also visited, I borrowed the roof line and the ivy covered walls. From Leeds Castle, which we did not visit (but somehow acquired a brochure), I adopted the idea of part of the castle being built right on the lake and crystal clear reflections. Note the detail you can make out in the water. Finally, some of it was pure imagination; the corner turrets, the separate watch tower.
 The Master Plan | The Plan. I took pictures, I took notes, I stashed it all away and then I procrastinated. Finally, about a month and half before Billy was due, I began to plan what the mural would look like. I added a rainbow and a waterfall, put a ship on the lake, and added other scenic elements, working the images around doors, windows, shelves, and a built-in changing table. When the master plan was worked out, I made more detailed drawings of each wall.
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| South Wall |
West Wall |
North Wall |
East Wall |
 The Work. While planning the mural, I prepped the room. After clearing everything out of it, I removed the existing built-in table and wall shelves. I wanted to reuse them, but in different places, so I just took them out of the room. It turned out that the north wall was covered with wall paper that had been painted over and would have to be removed.  That wall also had six 12" square mirrors glued to it, and the only way to remove them was to smash the mirrors into tiny bits. Not the most preferred way to start decorating a nursery. After the smashing and the scraping and the sweeping and the steaming and more scraping, I had a wall full of tiny (and not so tiny) gouges, which I filled with drywall mud. On January 14, 2000, I taped newspaper to the hardwood floors, spread out a black tarp, and was able to get a single coat of white paint on everything before I quit for the evening. That night, Katie's water broke, more than a month early.
 After that, I could only sneak in relatively short bursts of work on the mural. It took me about three months to complete, and I've shown a couple pictures from the work in progress. I used satin finish interior wall paint for the white (trim, closet and ``canvas''), light blue (sky and its reflection), and green (land and its reflection). The rest was acrylic artists' paint. The grid lines you see in the detail wall plans were transfered to the wall using snap chalk. I then penciled the design on the wall square-by-square, more or less. By the time I finished, I had grounded the outlets, installed a new light fixture and wall plates, replaced the heat register, and remounted the freshly painted table and shelves. Katie did the window treatment, choosing the blinds and curtain rod, and sewing the curtains from fabric which matched the crib skirt we ordered. I also designed pennants, flags and banners for the castle and ship which matched the skirt and blanket.
The Final Product. Here are four images of Billy's nursery, taken with our new digital camera. Each image was created by merging six images using the photomerge feature of Adobe's Photoshop Elements. All the images are just under 200K and take about a minute to load using a standard modem connection.
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The Work. While planning the mural, I prepped the room. After clearing everything out of it, I removed the existing built-in table and wall shelves. I wanted to reuse them, but in different places, so I just took them out of the room. It turned out that the north wall was covered with wall paper that had been painted over and would have to be removed. 
That wall also had six 12" square mirrors glued to it, and the only way to remove them was to smash the mirrors into tiny bits. Not the most preferred way to start decorating a nursery. After the smashing and the scraping and the sweeping and the steaming and more scraping, I had a wall full of tiny (and not so tiny) gouges, which I filled with drywall mud. On January 14, 2000, I taped newspaper to the hardwood floors, spread out a black tarp, and was able to get a single coat of white paint on everything before I quit for the evening. That night, Katie's water broke, more than a month early. 
