We have had plans to do some remodeling for quite some time, but when we found out we were pregnant, we knew we needed to get it done quickly. We completely gutted and redid a room that had been added onto our house for our master bedroom, and our old bedroom got redone for our 8-year-old son.
I knew I wanted to make it special. I wanted it to be a place he absolutely loved. I had all of these grand plans, but, as it sometimes goes, some things we just weren’t able to make happen. But one thing I did want was a black wall, and I am so glad we did it because it looks amazing.
First, let me show you a few pictures of what it looked like before we started.
Now, I have to say that I am a bit ashamed because we didn’t do anything in this room except paint before we moved into it. It was one of the least of our concerns. We moved our furniture in and this is just the way that it was for almost 4 years. After all of the remodeling we did on the rest of the house, we were tuckered out at the time.
We knew we needed new trim, baseboards, trim around the windows, fresh coat of paint, and a few other small things.
So we set to work. Since our son is 8 now and I am pregnant and there are things I cannot do, he has gotten to do a lot of helping with projects the last couple of months, and he has thoroughly enjoyed it.
We picked out the stain color of gunstock by Minwax. It was a little bit more on the orange side than what we were expecting, but we thought it was a great color for a boy’s room. It added a pop.
We used 0 VOC paint from our local hardware store. I loved the black wall from the first moment I saw the color on the wall. I originally wanted to do 1x4s all the way up the wall and have them painted black so that they could help cover some of the flaws on the wall, but we weren’t able to do that right now.
After all the paint dried and the trim, baseboards, and other things were done, we set to work decorating.
I also made display shelves using scrap wood for some of his books and they turned out great!
I picked out some scrap wood that we had from doing the trim and ripping some boards. I decided the length I wanted, measured, cut, wood glued, nailed, sanded, painted, and my husband hung them up. Easy peasy.
I had a beautiful USA map bulletin board from Twelve Timbers that I knew I wanted to be the focal point of the black wall that I call the activity wall.
He is really into Legos, so I also wanted to create a Lego wall and have a shelf that I repainted to display his Lego characters. I used Lego tape on the ledge of the shelf so the characters could stand. I also used the Lego tape around the edges of the Lego boards to frame them out. You can buy Lego wallboards on Amazon, but I already had baseplates. I adhered them to the wall using Command strips.
He needed a desk for his room, so we ordered it from Wayfair. It is perfect for the space. The bookshelf is also from Wayfair.
We found him new bedding since he loves Black Panther right now. I also bought items to make an art station on the wall. My husband put it up for me.
We used:
- 2- Galvanized Tube Straps
- 1- 36-inch Wooden Dowel Rod
- 1- Wooden Yardstick (you can also use a paint stir stick)
- 1- Roll of Paper from Amazon
We have maybe $20 into the project, but he has countless hours of being able to draw “on the wall” which he thinks is cool.
As you can see by his smile, he definitely loves his new room!!
