DIY NURSERY FEATURE WALL

I get asked all the time about the feature wall in Arden’s nursery. It is often mistaken for wallpaper or wall decals but in fact it is paint! If you have followed my reno posts you will know how I feel about wallpaper!

After months of stripping wallpaper and spending a fair amount on skim coating the entire house it is fair to say that I will not have wallpaper in my house again!!

So since I get so many questions over on Instagram about the wall I thought I would share with you how I achieved it.

So as you can see we started in a disaster zone. It was a spare room which then turned into the tool room whilst renovating the bathroom and just ended up as a dumping ground!

The first step was removing the horrid wallpaper…..AHHH MORE WALLPAPER! This room for some reason was surprisingly easy to remove. I have a hunch that it was because its the only room that isn’t north facing getting the sun all day long which made the paper easier to remove….but who knows!

ANYWAY… I had a great wallpaper remover who did an excellent job at stripping the paper and putting lots of little dents in the wall at the same time. Lucky we were going to be skim coating!

So once stripped we had the plasterers in to skim coat giving us a beautiful smooth new surface to work with.

Things you will need:

• Painters tape
• Ruler
• Spirit level
• Pencil
• Paint (in the colours you have chosen to work with)
• Paint brush
• Roller and tray

1. So the very first step is to make sure you have clean dry walls to begin with. For me I had to use a special under coat to seal the plaster and then I proceeded paint the whole room grey. This was my base colour. (choosing the right grey was near mission impossible!) You may need to tape off your edges before doing this to prevent paint getting onto your skirtings and scotia. If you have carpets it would be wise to lay a drop cloth!

I taped off mine after I had painted the walls and then painted all the edges and framing white. (excuse my lack of correct lingo)

2. I then measured out a grid pattern on the wall with my spirit level. I made 30cm x 30cm blocks using the spirit level and pencil. Excuse the terrible photo but you can see the grid in the above photo.
NB:Now I had issues trying to remove the pencil lines after wards and had to end up painting over them. So only draw very light lines….I was quite heavy handed!!

3. I drew each triangle using a pencil and the spirit level as a ruler. Two squares made the flat of the triangle and each angle came to a point in the corner of two squares (does that make sense?)
I put a piece of tape in the middle of each of the triangles which are going to stay grey to make sure I didn’t paint them by mistake. I decided to leave the triangles pointing upwards grey and paint the upside down ones white and mint.

4. I then taped off the upside down ones in sections (you will see you can’t do all at once as they overlap!) and painted them with my chosen colour, which was white.

5. I did the same thing with the mint ones and kept taping and painting and waiting to dry until all the upside down triangles were filled in. each triangle had two coats of the chosen colour (three if pencil lines were still showing through from that heavy hand of mine!)

The overall effect is totally worth the time and effort!! Once I removed all the tape there were a few bits that needed touching up so I grabbed a tiny paint brush and set to work touching up all the little bits and pieces.

Now did I mention that I was 30 something weeks preggo and it was the middle of summer when I embarked on this nursery reno journey?? It was SOOOOO HOT! The room didn’t have a lot of airflow either so my painting attire ended up being rather minimal to try and keep comfortable!

At the time I would never have shared this image but over a year later I find it fascinating looking at it and thinking that my nearly one year old boy was tucked up in that big belly!! Thanks Kylan for capturing this moment, not bad for a 4 year old!

Now that the messy part was out of the way it was time to lay some fresh new luxurious carpet in a gorgeous charcoal colour and get ready for the REALLY exciting part to start….GET NESTING and FILL UP THE ROOM!

I will be posting a full tour of Baby Arden’s nursery soon so keep an eye out but if you can’t wait follow me on Instagram and you can see daily updates of Arden’s room and the rest of the house!