Nursery Ideas

{UPDATE: March 2011... here's how it all turned out: the nursery}

My husband is currently spending every evening after work holed up behind sheets of plastic in the future nursery refinishing the hard wood floors. This is a sawdust-covered, loud, and sweaty job. The fact that I'm currently growing a human gets me out of said job (although come to think of it, I wasn't much help when he redid the dining room floors last spring and I was decidedly unpregnant at the time. Oops.)

Since he's putting in all of this hard work, it's my responsibility- no, my duty- to work equally hard brainstorming ideas for the design of the nursery, no?

First off, here's what we're working with...

When we bought our house, the room looked like this:


Creepy man over uncovered fireplace does not exactly scream comfy nursery, does it?


Back when I actually contributed to house renovating, I painted it for its brief stint as an office/extra guest room in Benjamin Moore's Hush:

Don't worry, we have plans for covering up the fireplace to make it baby proof.


Colors:
No pastels here. I want vibrant, fun, and bright. I've decided to use this fabric swatch for inspiration:
It's Alexander Henry's 2D Zoo in Pool, and yes, I realize that this print is to the nursery world what Feel Script is to the wedding world (read: totally overused). And I don't care because I love it. The bedding will be made of this and a couple other bright prints that coordinate.

The nursery has white trim and a white chair rail (Benjamin Moore Decorator's White to be exact) that will be staying. I'm thinking of painting different shades above and below the chair rail, giving a feel like this:

Image: Noah's Sunshine Nursery via Ohdeedoh

Here are the Benjamin Moore colors I'm going to try:

Baltimore Sky with Pacific Palisades



or Madison Avenue with Meridian Blue

Furniture:
My brother and his wife have generously let us borrow their crib and changing table.




After a lot of debate, I think we've decided to splurge on a nice rocker... this one is the frontrunner:

Land of Nod Attractive American Rocker


In Ocean Blue (which coordinates with our living room furniture in case we want to use it there someday):

Rug:
I'm really torn on which direction to go with a rug...

White:

Bright:
Somewhere in between:



I'm leaning towards white to balance out all the bright colors elsewhere, but is that a terrible choice for a kid's room?

Any thoughts?