Hey guys! So many of you probably saw me post this picture on my Instagram account a few months back but I wanted to share some of the details with you because regardless of what everyone thinks I swear it is EASY. If you have two hands, a few hours, a creative mindset and a butt load of painters tape you can totally do it. Reid and I actually got up at 5 am and knocked this out with some awesome teamwork before Auggie even woke up at 730…not kidding! I’m only going to post pictures from when this was first finished without any of the recent updates we’ve done to the room since then..those will be separate blog posts coming up! Gotta keep y’all on your toes 😉 By the way, I’m not even close to being southern, but I always envy all the cute girls from the south that get to say y’all in all of their sentences, so today we’re just going to go with it!
If you’re not following me on Instagram you’re probably wondering why in the world we did this massive mountain mural on one of the walls of our 3 bedroom house. Well, I am pregnant with our second boy, due in May, and we are planning on switching Auggie over to a “big boy room” in the next couple months and putting the baby in the current nursery. It seemed like the right answer for us considering the nursery is fully setup. Auggie will be about 18 months when he’s born, so he will still be little, but it’s definitely a room he will grow into! I spent a lot of time stalking Pinterest ideas and drawing out sketches in that room and doing an outdoor adventure themed room just seemed really fitting for the area we live in and also the hobbies of the family. This room has been totally designed from scratch, it was our guest bedroom before, so all of that got moved out, and we got to start with a blank slate. Step one…paint the walls! Side note, we painted the other walls in the room Benjamin Moore’s Revere Pewter, the same color as the rest of the house! This is an amazing color because it really can take on a light grey or taupe color depending on its surroundings.
Materials Used:
- Painters tape
- Painters tarp to cover floor
- Lots of rags/microfiber towels around for oopsies (it happens more than it should for me)
- Respirator
- All paint colors are Behr Marquee…I swear by this brand, it’s the JAM!
- Paint Brush to get in the tips of mountain ranges/smaller areas
- Edger
- Roller
- Lots of COFFEE & some good teamwork!
Step 1: Painter’s tape will be your best friend in this project…get lots of it. Normally we use the green frog tape because that stuff is the best in the tape world, but this time we just used normal blue painters tape because it’s a bit flimsier and easier to shape. Also…safety is very important when painting in a small room (especially if pregnant!) We spent about $30 on this respirator and I use it for all projects, painting, staining, cutting, etc.
Step 2: Tape off the pointy mountain ranges to how you would like them, this is the first step we did because you can be sloppy towards the bottom since there will be the dark “rough terrain” that will be painted on the bottom quarter. Paint within the tape with either a paint brush or edger. The color used here is Revere Pewter so it tied in with the surrounding walls, plus like I said it’s one of my favorite grey paints. Let this dry about 15 minutes (you’ll be able to quickly touch it with your finger to see if it’s cured enough to move on).
Step 3: Trace the sun..this was probably the hardest part, which I made Reid do because he has the hands of a surgeon! I’m totally too spastic for that, but he nailed it (pun intended). To make it perfectly round he placed a nail in the wall, tied some string around it, and a pencil at the end of the string to give him a sturdy guide, basically a DIY compass that we could adjust to the appropriate size of what we wanted. Genius! The color of the sun was Behr Marquee “Fuzzy Duckling.”
Step 4: As the sun and the top mountain range is drying up I taped off tiny triangles going in different directions to make the sun beams… I also just thought it added some nice character to the wall. The color used on this is Behr Marquee Trinket Gold.
Step 5: Remove tape! There’s a fine line with tape removal, you don’t want it to sit too long so that the tape tacks up over it and peels off poorly, but you also don’t want to remove it right away. A good time frame is probably 15-30 minutes, you’ll be able to tell by giving it a little tap with the tip of your finger.
Step 6: Free hand the dark terrain at the bottom. So for this part, I actually just sketched this on with pencil ahead of time so I had a rough idea of what I wanted and from there Reid just used a paint brush & edger to fill it all on to the bottom of the wall. The color used here was leftover from painting the exterior of our house this summer, we ran out of it after this project so I am unable to reference it but I am pretty sure it is called Behr Marquee Graphic Charcoal.
Step 7: Once the mountain tops are dry you can add more painters tape and do the “icy tops.” For this color we did Behr Marquee Seagull Gray.
Step 8: Attach plane to the wall…this will just depend on what kind of plane you have if you choose to do this step. Reid had to buy some brackets to put through the wheels and attach to the wall. It took some thinking but that plane is anchored up there and not coming down any time soon! I was super excited about this addition because I have had this plane sitting in storage for a few years now hoping I would someday get to make use of it! It’s also Auggie’s favorite part of the room, he lays in his big boy bed and makes airplane sounds as he stares at it. How’s that for CUTE?!
Other little tidbits:
Please excuse the terrible lighting in these photos…it was 5 am and I didn’t have my nice camera charged!!! Also, since there were so many different paint colors used in such small areas I just got the sample sizes of most of the paint colors (except Revere Pewter) they are way cheaper, I think about $5 a pop.
I hope this was helpful! I know not everyone is planning on painting a wall mural in their rooms any time soon, but I just wanted to let you know by sharing this post that a lot of the things you see on Pinterest which look impossible to do really are NOT! If you take it step by step you can amaze yourself with the possibilities of DIY projects.
Since this wall has been completed, Reid has built a big boy bed, we did the window seat (posted below) built floating shelves above the new dresser, and found an awesome lambs wool rug. I am hoping to have this room totally finished in the next month and will do a full tour for you all. Stay tuned!
Sending you lots of positive vibes to get you through the rest of your week,
Kristin
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