Project: Playroom Progress

2 days ago
5 min read

I have been dreaming of a million different ways I could decorate my daughters' playroom for the past 4 years, but decision fatigue and feeling paralyzed by how quickly they were growing up left this room lifeless and bland for too long. The desperate need for new carpet finally snapped me out of my sleep paralysis and kicked me into high gear! The mood board was solidified, wallpaper ordered, and the tools came out swinging!

Theme: Silly Goose

Vibe: Modern Vintage with a hit of Old English, playful, youthful, IMAGINATIVE.

Functional Needs:

Cozy reading bench with all the toy storage possible
Built in desk with floating shelves
A place for our pull out couch with "coffee table" (more toy storage and play surface)
A place for the play kitchen (of course)
A place for our new (or, I guess you could say "old") CRT TV

Our "new" CRT TV

Yes, we got a CRT TV! Ha! Way too much to say here... so stay tuned for a follow up blog post as to why we made this parenting move and why it's our new favorite parenting hack!

The Board and Batten

I started by sketching out the dimensions and creating a list of materials needed for the project... which took FOREVER. Prioritizing all the things that needed to be done before our carpet install, realzing we couldn't get it ALL done in time. This would have to be done in phases.

With the help of my parents entertaining my girls while Tyson was out of town, I spent a whole saturday installing the baseboards and board and batten. Baseboards went in first, with our bullnosed edge pieces on the corners.

Then, vertical boards installed an even distance apart, and capped it off with another board across the top.

Tools needed:

Nail gun
Chop saw

Materials Needed:

Wood filler
Caulk
Nails (1/2" long)
Sanding paper (highest grit possible)
Wood glue (optional - I opted out this time)
Crap ton of MDF boards (3.5")
Baseboards (5.5")

Pro Tip: If you are nailing boards into an area with no studs, you need a way to secure it to the drywall. Wood glue can help with this, but to avoid damaging the walls, I angle the nail gun with each nail, switching directions each time so your nails make an X pattern. This will secure the board to the dry wall without the need for glue.

After attaching all the MDF boards, I hammered in all the protruding nails with a nail setter, filled all the holes with wood filler, caulked around every joining piece (which was a lot!), and primed the walls.

DISCLAIMER:

I hate, absolutely hate, despise seeing drywall texture in between a board and batten design.

The proper way is to have a sheet of plywood behind the boards. However, if I set the plywood on top of my baseboards and behind the board and batten design, then my board and batten would protrude past the baseboard (a big no-no), but I didn't want to set the plywood bhind the baseboards because I just didn't want it to be that permanent. So, I had the "genius" idea to custom cut plywood to sit inside each rectangle.

DUMB idea. That was so incredibly hard getting each rectangle perfectly cut to size and attaching it completely flush to the wall. I spent 4 hours attempting this strategy before throwing in the towel. Maybe I was too tired - but just about sent me to the loony bin! Haha. So I, instead, spent 5 hours sanding the texture down to what felt like nothing... Put a pin in this stratagy... we'll come back to this later! (Grrrr).

The Storage Bench

I realize this storage bench is about 6" too tall to be a traditional window seat, but we have functional needs and I knew after it was all done, it would look fine! To avoid building custom drawers, we bought an IKEA storage set. Tyson built a supportive frame to go around it so we could center the storage set on the window, make it deep enough for comfortable bench seating, match the depth of the desk on the other side, and give it a more built-in look. The frame was made out of 2x6 boards and cabinetry nails.

Overall dimensions:

IKEA storage set was 18" deep by 6' long
Full bench (storage set + supportive frame around it) is 2' deep by 7' long

Getting this all level was an absolute nightmare. Let's just say I'm glad that was on Tyson's task list haha.

Paint

The paint color I chose was _______ by Sherwin Williams.

From the beginning, I envisioned this being a high-gloss paint so it looked very Old English and be super easy to clean. But, after seeing the paint dry... I realized a few things that should have been obvious to me had I not purchased the paint at 9:00 pm with carpet being installed at 6:30 am the next day.

The higher the gloss, the more it shows.

I know this... but for some reason (Oh, I don't know, maybe it was because I was working a fulltime job with kids home for the summer, while trying to get this project done in a short time frame) I totally forgot this fun fact.

Remember those hours of sanding I did? Useless. Completely useless.

You can totally see the texture. In fact, the texture is even more prominent in the areas I sanded and painted a high-gloss paint than you can above with the previous flat paint and UN-sanded areas. Hilarious! Facepalm.

ALSO, you can see all my brush strokes AND nail holes.

Which leads me to our next section...

What's Left to do

Lots! For starters, doing another coat of paint on the walls, except this time, it'll be in a semi-gloss or eggshell finish. (I may even sand down the walls and use a paint sprayer... But boy that sounds like a lot of work that I'm not sure I'm up for haha.)

I'm still debating if I want to add plywood in my rectangles, or deal with a little texture showing. TBD.

I have more trim I've been dying to add to the inside of the board and batten trim! EEK! So cute! I'll paint this first and then install it to avoid paint globs in the grooves.

My darling goose wallpaper will need to be installed. Soooo excited for that! Especially to have no more brown in this room - BYEEEE!

As for the bench... We have two 6" wide by 9' tall boards that will go floor to ceiling on both sides of the stroage set with a 1' wide scalloped edge board that will go across the top, framing in that whole bench - EEK! We'll add book shelves on the insides of that frame on both sides. I need to make a cushion top and hang curtains - I'm so excited to see what patterns we'll choose! (I say "we" but I really mean "I" haha!)

We need to install the desk top, baseboards inside the desk, floating shelves, and a fun design (shiplap, bead board, or maybe wallpaper) behind the floating shelves.