Oh Joy Nursery/Office Makeover: the mountain wall mural

For Joy’s new nursery we wanted it to be really fun and reflect their happy personalities but since it was also their home office we couldn’t go ‘full crazy’. Wallpaper would have been fun but over the budget, but just painting the walls seemed boring. I thought about doing an overall pattern but then I met up with my friend, Pinterest, for inspiration and found some:

Many of you might remember how I wanted to do a mountain-scape backsplash in our kitchen, but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to make it work with tile – at least not in a way that would look good. But here it was not only doable but so easy. It would be near the crib area – making that area feel more happy and kid-like, while helping to delineated the two spaces. We did some renderings to show them what we were thinking.

This first rendering is a simpler version, and it could work, but it didn’t quite feel right:

The second rendering had way more impact, felt more dynamic and allowed us to bring in multiple colors.

Oh an I haven’t talked about it yet, but we wanted to paint the bottom half of the room (where there was no mural) a color; almost like a horizon. The room was white already, but it was dingy and creamy and needed to be freshened up, anyway.

Bob requested more neutral colors and they both love grey and blue – clearly i’m no stranger to those colors, either. As far as picking the colors we brought all our paint decks and chose 7 or 8 that we liked. We got sample pots of all of them and then just went for it and sampled them on the walls. Ultimately we liked the strong blue has a ‘POW’ and then flanked it with a medium gray ad a more icy gray.

Click through to see the rest of the project:

I didn’t have much of a plan for the pattern besides the renderings – it’s not like I measured it or anything, mostly because I despise measuring. In full Emily style I just grabbed the tape and went for it and it was strangely easy. None of the mountains were the same size or height and we varied them as we went along. I look at all the intricate stencil-ing and patterned wall diy’s out there and I want to be that person, I really do, but meticulous isn’t my thing and if you aren’t careful you can seriously make a diy all look like garbage that a monkey drew. The sun was drawn with a thumbtack and a pencil tied to string which was attached to the thumbtack. We drew the perfect circle and then filled that bad boy in with a very bright and sunny yellow.

The whole thing took just one day. We painted the top white and the bottom gray, while I was taping up the pattern. We had Brady and Robbie helping, but Brady was busy doing other stuff, too, so I honestly think this project could take just 1 day even for one person. The tricky part is taking off the tape and then retaping it so you can paint over where the original tape was.

That is where we left it at the end of the day, but as I stared at the photos of it night I realized that while the nursery didn’t need to be gender specific I didn’t want all of the interweb to be emailing joy, saying ‘Did you have a boy ….’. Not everyone has such a modern view of colors as we do, and in traditional nursery style this did go a little more ‘boy’. So the next morning we came back and added that hot pink which did A LOT for the space, woke it up a big and made it feel totally happy and not gender specific.

Paint Colors:

Blue Mountains: Dutchboy Lapis Enamel. Light Grey Mountains: Dutchboy Iced Cube Silver. Dark Grey Mountains: Dutchboy Handcast Pewter. Bottom Half of Wall: Dutchboy Silver Half Dollar. Sun: Benjamin Moore Sun City

Sneak Peek:

One’s shirt must always match one’s crib sheet. The full reveal is tomorrow. You best come back and check it out. xx, E.