Adding A Play Kitchen & Bookshelf To A Kids Room

Step right up to the wall ‘o lively! Sounds like a carnival ride, right? Do not worry, there will be no clowns or motion sickness. It all began when we moved Clara’s crib out of her room, and shifted the dresser that used to be on this wall to the former crib wall (more on that here). Which left the wall to the right of the bed fully bare. So we chose to bring in a lot more lively to that blank space, now that there was room for it. Clara already has some baskets of toys and books along with a play-table where she loves to build castles and draw, but things like her play kitchen, refrigerator, and food cart were all relegated to other rooms for lack of space before the crib got the boot.

Yeehaw! Amiright?

At first, it was not looking quite exciting. Check out all of that bare white wall going on.

And here is where I show you my chaos and say “welcome to the first ten minutes of any project.” It nearly consistently looks like this. There was a lot of lively and colorful art leftover from her nursery and her playroom in the last house that I could not wait to hang up on that blank white wall. So I simply began laying things down on the bed (Clara helped me pick her go-tos) and we ended up with this vivid progress shot.

She also truly hoped a mirror at her height, which was a request that John and I could not wait to fulfill. It was a lot like her “I want a clock” request (the blue cuckoo clock that I made her is still her go-to thing in the whole room) and we knew she’d truly appreciate if we hooked her up with a place to study her funny faces and show her dolls the latest hairstyles that she was giving them instead of having to trek into our room and use our big leaning mirror in there.

This mirror is in fact the one that we took out from our half bathroom back in July, although the brassy finish was not exactly complementing the silver hardware on her play kitchen and refrigerator, so I thought I could spruce it up for Clara with some fresh paint and a lively little pattern. First I laid it down on a big piece of cardboard at the kitchen table and wiped it down with liquid deglosser, simply to get it paint-ready.

Then I used leftover white paint (BM Simply White in semi-gloss) that we use on all of our trim and doors, simply to give it a clean base coat. You will notice that I got a little paint on the mirror pane itself, but that is straightforward sufficient to remove (more on that in a second). So the most essential thing is simply to get a pleasant even coat. That includes that crack where the mirror meets the frame. Then simply let that dry and give it at least one more coat if it needs it for the coverage. Mine simply needed two coats and it was good to go.

As for how to remove any paint that gets on the surface of the mirror, I am a big fan of simply scraping it off with a straight razor. And for curved shapes like this, an exacto knife can in fact be truly straightforward to slide along the mirror’s surface to peel off any paint that is on there, simply like this:

Now for the lively part. I had some metallic silver paint among my little tubes of acrylic colors, and I thought it could be lively to add some pattern to the mirror with it. So I simply squeezed out a blob of it on the cardboard…

… and used a small flat craft brush to make little arrow-like shapes all the way around the mirror. I simply spaced them by eye, and I liked the nearly heart-like effect of them. I also did not mind the imperfect “painted by hand” look, so I resisted the urge to go back over anything and smooth it out or futz with it.

Once it dried, I hung it back up, and voila! Clara was ENAMORED that we fulfilled her mirror request, and we both enjoy that it adds some pattern and interest to the wall while bouncing around more light (and allowing me to watch Clara even if she’s behind me, which further convinces her that I have eyes in the back of my head).

Bonus points for being able to spy on Burger too…

Here is a panned out shot of the wall. I also hung the shelves that John built for her quite first nursery along with her go-to art picks and her new mirror. All of the frames were light sufficient to be held up with a regular old picture nail into the drywall (no anchors) and the shelves got some extra long screws and anchors, simply to be sure they could hold some weight. The mirror also got an anchor and a screw since it is on the heavier side, along with two 3M heavy duty velcro strips at the bottom (so it is even more secure and cannot hop off the wall on anyone).

We enjoy that the shelves can come in handy for kitchen items, books, toys, etc. And now between using those to store and display things, playing with her kitchen/fridge/food cart, looking at her go-to art, and enjoying her reflection in the mirror, well – there is a lot to do on that little wall of hers.

And it looks fairly darn cute with her pink door and wall full of raindrops too. Here is a shot of her getting in on the lively, simply to show you the scale of things. She can easily reach that top shelf and see herself in the mirror (with a little headroom for when she grows a bit more).

Now that there are no longer bare walls everywhere, the room is suddenly feeling a lot more wrapped up, although I am sure it’ll continue to evolve as she grows. Simply kidding Clara, no more growing is allowed! Plus I still have some fairly lofty goals for her big walk-in closet (that thing is destined to be a hidden playhouse within her room – she in fact picked this room for that closet).

Oh and with seven days to spare, we are officially working on Clara’s Christmas present (it is a tradition of ours to hand-make something for her, like this, this, and this). Looks like it is going to be down to the wire again… which seems to be an annual tradition for us as well. Are you folks doing any last-minute holiday shopping/building/decorating? How about adding little pockets of lively to a kids room? Or at last hanging art that you’ve been meaning to get to for, oh, half a year now?

Psst- A few folks have told us about an unsavory ad for League of Angels on our sidebar and an annoying pop up for Aveeno, both of which are not authorized, so we are working on blocking ’em. Please let us know if you ever see anything inappropriate (or any pop-up whatsoever) since they are never cool with us, and we’d enjoy a screen grab and the url/site that it links to so we can get them blocked. Sorry for the trouble!