Playroom Art Gallery Wall
January 24, 2011
Hi all, hope you had a great weekend! A few weeks ago, I mentioned that one of my home goals for this year was to take a bare patch of wall in my kids play space and turn it into an art and homework station. Many many moons ago, before the little ones were born, I actually had a ‘formal’ dining room. Ha! Those were the days when we had an entire room dedicated to formal dining. No point in that these days, so after those babies were born we decided to better use that square footage to store their toys, games, etc in a kid friendly space.
There was a bare unused patch of wall in there, so over the weekend I created a little art desk and wall gallery for my daughter. Art is her most favorite activity ~ drawing or painting is the first thing she wants to do when she wakes up, and the big excuse she uses to wiggle out of her looming homework. I decided to encourage her talents and dedicate a little station to my budding artist.
Her older sister gave her the desk from her bedroom, so that meant I didn’t have to buy one! Yeehaw, gotta love shopping your house for the perfect solution! I gave it some grosgrain ribbon trim around the edges for a fun pop of color.
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I had a glass top made for the small desk at a local shop, then to add a fun pattern, I layered a simple cotton print fabric underneath the glass ~ it’s stapled underneath so it will stay in place.
The small lamp is from Target, I added some fun ribbon to the shade with hot glue.
I thought about taking a trip to IKEA for some floating wall shelves, but then luckily I found some laminate ones on clearance at my nearby Target. I primed them with oil based primer, then gave them a quick coat of white paint!
No one has to know they were two different colors before !
Most of the picture frames are Goodwill finds, or found on discount at either Michaels or Target. RustOleum has a fun line of ‘Painter’s Touch’ colors like ‘Aqua’ and ‘Green Apple’ ~ they make it easy to change a frame’s color with just a can of paint.
Together, my girl and I went through her stack of her drawings and paintings, and she picked a few recent favorites to frame.
The nice thing about a gallery like this is she can change out her drawings so easily.
Here’s a peek at the other walls in their play area. Here is the TV/storage wall and the laminate media center I painted last year.
On the other side of the media center is the sofa with a giant map behind it. This wall map is from National Geographic and comes in three vertical sections. It’s easy to get up on the wall ~ I used a staple gun to attach it to the wall and double sided tape to keep the seams together. To create the frame, I trimmed it with MDF chair rail after I spray painted it espresso brown. The map can be purchased here.
Opposite the new art desk and gallery is this window wall, above it is the wood cornice I built last summer. The rug is from Rugs USA, available here.
This bonus room downstairs is a great play space for art, games, movies and entertaining their friends, and we think a much wiser use of square footage than a formal dining room. And my daughter just loves her new art gallery wall!
I’ve got another fun project to feature later in the week, but today I’m packing my luggage. Yep, it’s another airplane trip, this time I’m headed to the Blissdom conference in Nashville. I’m very excited to meet up with so many of my home blogger friends who inspire me greatly.
What DIY projects do you have in the works right now?
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Tags: my home, playroom, wall gallery
