We Did A Star Wars Room! Woot Woot!

Last week John and I got to design and decorate two kids' rooms for some friends - and they pretty much let us do whatever we wanted, so I had a BLAST. The two brothers wanted a Star Wars room, and their sister chose a teal-and-red Princess Elena theme. 

I won't keep you in suspense, let's start with the Star Wars room.

BEFORE:

(That's Ellie, patiently waiting for us to finish HER room across the hall, ha.)

This room needed some construction work first: removing that funky top ledge. The boys' bunk bed was right beside it, so it was a parental heart attack waiting to happen.

Fortunately John made short work of it, and by the next day:

Bye-bye, ledge!

 Here's a look at the rest of the room from the door.

It's not a huge room, so the only furniture is the bunk bed and a long low dresser:

It took John and I about 3.5 days to demo the ledge, patch the drywall, paint the room, construct the window valence and Armory rack, replace and rewire the ceiling fan, and then decorate the walls with all our glowy Star Wars goodies. Ready to see the results?

AFTER:

 I used the dresser wall and corner as the focal point, since the bunk beds dominate the far wall.

Plus this way the boys can see all the fun stuff from their beds at night.

 There are still a few bare spots I'd like to fill, like the wall over the head of the top bunk. (I have my eye on some Star Wars art for that.)

 The dangerous ledge is gone, which opens up that side of the room:

We still need something cool up in that remaining nook by the ceiling, though. The big Stormtrooper is a start, but I'd like to make a backlit skyline out of MDF to set in there. If we made it tall enough that could also hide any long-term storage they want to stash behind it in the future.

That's the overview, so now let's talk DETAILS. Like how we built stuff, and where we bought the rest.

There's a popular tutorial on In My Own Style for making window valances out of insulation foam, so I asked John about giving that a try. Hers is held onto the wall with pins and/or paper brads, though, so John made it his way with much stronger materials. First we used 1" pink insulation foam instead of polystyrene, which is thicker and stronger but still weighs next-to-nothing:

Next John attached the L-brackets with bolts and screws, and set the side panels to the same height so they would sit flush on the wall.

He also added an extra corner support for strength:

Here's our finished valance base, ready to be wrapped with fabric:

I attached the fabric using straight pins the same way Diane of In My Own Style did, so check out her tutorial for a step-by-step. (Another bonus of using 1" foam: I didn't have to insert the pins at an angle; they could go straight in.)

The Star Wars fabric is from JoAnn's, mounted diagonally to look cooler.

The paint color is Mindful Gray by Sherwin Williams, which we had Lowe's match in a Valspur paint.

We actually filmed an entire painting tutorial during the few hours it took us to paint the room, where I shared all the tips and tricks and product recommendations you need to paint like a pro.  If I'm not too horrified by myself on camera, we should have that posted next week. (Also I was wearing our old company shirt, so John has to find a way to blur out the phone number on the back. Ha!)

The project I was most excited for in this room (besides the lightsaber night lights, of course) was our Armory display for the boys' Star Wars Nerf guns:

 

We originally planned to use metal pegboard for this, but with a rough-housing four-year-old in the room I worried about the safety hazard of multiple metal spikes sticking out of a wall.

Eventually we came up with the BRILLIANT - but ultimately failed - plan of using magnets.

Steel flashing, Masonite, some mirrored cardstock, and whole lot of taping and painting later...

 

Lookin' good!

(Before you ask about the font: yes, YES IT IS. We're evil. And easily amused.)

So there it was, gang, all done and shiny and ready for install... AND THEN IT DIDN'T WORK. [sad trombone slide]

I mean, the magnets sort of held, but the guns slid right down the wall at the slightest bump. ARG. It's possible you could order much stronger magnets online, but we were on a time crunch and had to scramble for an immediate solution. 

So instead, after much sulking on my part, we attached everything with Velcro.

 

 We put the soft side of the Velcro on the guns, which doesn't seem to bother the boys. And hey, at least it still works and looks cool.

If any of you ever try this with stronger magnets (we attached them to the guns with hot glue), be sure to let me know if it holds!

We used that same Velcro (industrial strength) to attach a few of the boys' ships to the wall:

I'm a HUGE fan of decorating with toys (as evidenced by my office, ha) so before we started on the room I asked the boys to bring me all their Star Wars stuff. That's how I got the idea for the Armory wall (so many Nerf guns!) and this one. Originally I wanted to mount a lot more ships to the walls, but it's tricky finding enough flat surfaces on them for the Velcro! Anyway, these two can be pulled right off the wall when the kids want to play with them, easy-peasy.

 We ordered the color-changing lightsabers from Amazon here. They're battery operated, remote-controlled, and super fun to play with. Plus they automatically shut off after 15 minutes, so they're great for night lights. These cost about $30 each, but the same company has single-color options for nearly half that price.

 I asked the boys which toy ships they *don't* play with, and they gave me this big one to hang from the ceiling:

John used clear fishing line and three eye hooks screwed into the ceiling. Tying clear thread into knots is tedious work, but I love the end result!

Over on the bed wall we put together an epic space battle using re-positionable wall decals by RoomMates. I was impressed by how well these stuck, considering there's no glue.

We used two pack of decals: this one with the Star Destroyer and this one with the Death Star.

Over by the door we have our other awesome light-up feature: BB-8!

 Again, super impressed with how great this looks - though the tiny crack decals were a pain and a half to install. BB is another Amazon purchase, and cost about $25.

 K, I think that does it for the Star Wars room!

I hope this gave you guys some ideas - especially in the mounting-toys-on-the-wall area. :D

Stay tuned for the Princess Elena room and my bedazzled wall mural. Aw yeeeah.