February 2024
If anyone deserves a medal for putting up with the beige-adult aesthetic, it’s the kids. A quick apology to my growing boy for the blinding white walls that I insisted upon for his room. To make up for it, I let him decide what color to start with and he excitedly chose green. After a lot of consideration, I decided I would try an – and I cannot stress this word enough – uncomplicated, forest mural.
This room is huge compared to the other spare room, so we have some space to play with. We decided on one wall fully painted green and an easy tree design on another. We also decided on a rock-climbing corner, more on that later!
Here’s where we started:
Truth be told, at this point I had already started to remove some of the things in his room to prepare for the update.
The next step was to send the little dude to Nana and Pepaw’s house for a few days to give me some uninterrupted time to paint!
(Photo evidence of him making chocolate chip cookies while feasting on a dinner of chicken nuggets and French fries)
Mental Health Takeaway
As parents in a generation where our lives are constantly on display – thank you social media – we are made to believe that spaces are intended to be cohesive.
Does your child like the Zoo? That becomes their theme. Pressure to create a space that fully engulfs that theme sets in: a bedspread, rug, wall design, color scheme, all of it specific only to the Zoo.
Does your child also like astronauts? That’s unfortunate, that is not being considered for this design choice.
Permit yourself to like more than one thing. Themes are overrated, allow yourself (and your young humans) to make design decisions based on more than just fitting a singular theme.
Invite astronauts to the zoo.
Step 1. Clean and paint trim
As usual, I am not surprised by the amount of dog hair and dust that fills the baseboards of our home. As always, I grab the steamer and work my way around the room, wiping away two years of life (yep, a whole two years of not wiping down baseboards! Don’t tell Grandma.)
Similar to all the other rooms in the house, this one was also a victim of excessive paint splatter.
I taped off the carpet and caulked the corners to smooth out some cracks. After, I added the first coat of paint. This took a few rounds, and I had to get a little creative on the door frame. We have been marking little dude’s height for a few years, so I had to be sure I would be able to keep the memories.
I did this by holding a scrap piece of wood up to the frame, ensuring it was flat on the ground. I duplicated each mark from the frame onto the scrap wood. Once the door frame was finished and dried, I was able to hold the wood back against the frame and transfer the marks to their rightful location.
After the trim was completed, I focused on the large number of holes in the wall. I trusted no drywall when mounting anything in his room. Everything was either directly mounted to a stud or utilizing an anchor.
This was perfect for safety but made hole-patching a real pain.
Step 2. ‘Draw’ the mural.
I have many ideas here. Originally, my forest mural was going to be a variety of trees. Tall and wide, short and thin, and I had the internet to help!
I scoured Pinterest for inspiration and was flooded with options, mostly more elaborate than I was really going for, so instead I used what I had available.
Thanks to Apple’s Freeform program, I had all that I needed. I was able to copy/paste the same style of tree in varying sizes and colors, and decided that was all that we needed!
Next, the projector! This was slightly more complicated than I gave it credit for.
The problem came when I was trying to display this masterpiece on the wall. I realized I was not going to be able to get far enough away to have it as big as I’d like, so we had to split it up.
I set the projector up on something I could easily move along the wall without having to adjust the height or angle each time.
I suggest using a ladder or step stool, be sure that the projector is facing the wall directly and not turned slightly left or right.
Then, on my computer, I made this image larger, segmenting it into 3 sections. From there, I just projected a section on the wall, traced, moved my projector stand over, and did it again with the second and then the third segment.
It’s also important for me to mention that I gave little marks to indicate what color each tree needed to be.
This was an imperfect process, and if you are doing a mural where precision is key you will likely want to use better markers for where you start and stop. For me, however, it gave me just the outline I needed!
Step 3. Painting the Mural
Deciding on greens was the hardest part, but after weeks of contemplation, we finally settled on Succulent Leaves, French Market, and Chatty Cricket.
I started in the back painting the tree the ‘farthest’ away in the mural. I decided not to rely too heavily on the lines as a dedicated stopping point and instead let the brush create more organic edges.
After a few trees, I decided to use my setup for a little in-project-entertainment. What is better background noise than Jim Carrey?!
Also, yes, that is a wine glass tumbler on top o f my son’s truck. I felt like my chances of kicking it over were high if I left it on the ground.
I was able to complete this step (mostly) in one night! Each tree needed at least two coats, and by painting back to front, the branches from one tree could more naturally overlap those behind them.
Step 4. Touch-ups and Decor
The next morning, I was able to quickly jump in and go over any shallow spots, but there wasn’t much to do!
We luckily already had cloud lights, so adding this just above the trees seemed fitting.
Just like that, the minimum-effort wall mural was complete!
I wish that I had an adorable photo of J coming in to see it and be overwhelmed with joy, but truth be told, it was more of a small shrug of gratitude. I’ll take what I can get!
With this project done, we are finally able to move on to the more exciting rock climbing corner – check back in soon!
P.S. If you don’t have a pillow of a good friend’s face on your toddler’s bed – are you even friends? (Thanks Uncle Z!)