Every little boy needs a playroom for the never-ending Legos, cars, balls, and many other toys. We were finding that our living room had become Lego land, and I wanted Bentley to have a space that he could call his own.
You might remember this space from a while ago when we first moved in and styled this space. It used to look like this >>> Family Room, and we have changed the layout several times--mainly because when we designed it, we didn't consider that it'd be changing into a playroom so soon! Don't worry, the other half of the room is still all for Chris, but this side is all for Bentley, and that's the side that's featured in today's post!
Obviously, those photos above are the before, but I feel like every good DIY project starts with a terrible before photo so you can see how far we've come. We set up Bentley's toys and kitchen a couple of months ago just to give him a space of his own, but now it's time to show you the DIY process to take this less-than-inspiring playroom to a space that we all love!
I will say upfront, just like with every DIY project, take your budget and double it. This was supposed to be our under $50 weekend DIY project using leftover paint, however, our paint went bad, so we had to repurchase our paint, which made it a $100 DIY project.
First up, is the design. Chris is a graphic designer, so he actually designed this sign and came up with the entire idea! We purchased transparency paper here and were able to print on it with our printer at home. My Mother-in-Law works in education, so she had an old projector in her basement, and it worked wonderfully for this project! If you don't have a projector or know someone that has one, you can actually rent one from your local library, most of the time for free.
Once we got the projector lined up and it was at the perfect spot, we held our breath so we didn't accidentally move or bump it and started tracing our design with white colored pencils. I traced all of the curved lines and Chris went back with a straight edge and connected the straight lines so that we'd have crisp edges to follow while painting. Tracing took up about an hour and a half and we were able to get it done during one of Bentley's afternoon naps!
Next up was the fun part...which quickly became the not-so-fun and super tedious part...the painting! Since we were going from dark blue to white for a majority of the sign, we ended up needing four to five coats of paint for these letters, and that got old real quick. haha! We had to be strategic with our painting, so Chris actually taped off the straight edges and painted those while I focused on the curves and small letters.
The photo above was when we were so close to being finished...or so we thought. Later that night, we spent about four hours doing the touch-up painting to make the lines extra crisp. You can see that the lines were a little messed up or crooked, so thankfully the dark blue paint was easy to use to cover up the white and gray lines. Over the course of the long weekend, from random naptimes, attempting to have Bentley watch TV in the pack & play, to when Bentley went to bed, we were able to get this project completed!
I will say, this was our most tedious task ever, and I much prefer tiling over painting, but I am so in love with the way it helps brighten up the space and makes it our own.
Drum roll, please...
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