Kids Bedroom Makeover Part 2 - Planking

We're used to planking around the Kruse household - but not wood planking...yoga planking.  So when I told Brent that I wanted to plank a wall in the kids' room he reacted how he usually reacts, with a shrug.  Seriously love this guy!

As I was deep in the throes of painting the walls and trim in Emma and Owen's room, my brain was working overtime to figure out what to do with the recessed wall behind their beds.  It didn't take long for me to figure out what needed to happen.

When this room was Brent and I's, we had these great little wall mount swing arm lamps on each side of the bed, which were our main light source.  They came with us when we moved upstairs which left two lamps on the dressers and the overhead fan light for the kids.  As I was painting, I was getting more and more angry and the lack of light in the room.  It wasn't so bad during the day because there are two south'ish facing windows for natural light, but as soon as that sun went down it got dark in there pretty quickly.  I told Brent that we HAD to figure out a way to make the room brighter.

Our plan was to plank the walls, paint them bright white and add sconces to reflect the light off of the white paint.  Luckily, a few weeks ago we picked up a bunch of 9" tongue and groove planking from the garage attic of a foreclosed property.  At the time, I had no idea what we were going to use it for but I knew it would come in handy.

As I started to sand the finish off of the planks I realized the backside was untouched, so we ended up installing the planks backwards to save me all of the time and effort it would have required to sand everything down.

Brent started by adding thin vertical strips of plywood where the studs were located to give us a place to nail the horizontal planks.

 We left all of the original trim in place so the first piece of planking went right over the front of the trim and Brent notched the plank to fit around the quarter round and trim on the adjacent walls.

 Using a jig saw, he cut out a hole for the outlet.

It didn't take too long until the entire wall was paneled.  I would have LOVED to have kept it in it's natural state because the color was gorgeous, but the wall had to be painted white in order to capitalize on the added sconces.  Remember that light and bright are our main goal for this room!

I filled the nail holes with this wood filler and then lightly sanded them when it was dry.

Shopping for sconces was kinda tricky.  We had two things to consider when choosing them - they had to have a low profile (not stick out from the wall too much) because once the bunk beds got slid back into place we didn't want the lights getting knocked around by whichever kid happened to be sleeping on the top bunk.  The second stipulation was that we needed them to put off as much light as possible, which eliminated any sort of sconce that would force the light down.  Geez - does that last sentence even make sense??  Well...if you get it, then I guess you must "get" me.  We stumbled upon these sweet little mason jar lights at Home Depot for the whopping, bank breaking price of......$5.  I know.  $5.

I suppose if you add in the $3 bulbs that we bought for them and the $5 spray paint, they were more like $9/each.  Before we hung them, I spray painted them silver and then rubbed a brown glaze over the silver parts so they wouldn't look so shiny and new.  The glaze ended up making the silver spray paint look like galvanized steel, so I was happy with that.

We chose the placement of these lights very carefully so that when it's time for one child to move out of this room, we can center the bed on this wall and the sconces will flank the bed.  Side note: every time I type the word "sconce", I think of scones.  And now I'm getting really hungry for a white chocolate raspberry scone with those big sugar crystals baked on top.

Here's the wall after 1 coat of primer.  It looked sort of cool like this, but I wanted it glossier to bounce the light around.

 This is after the first coat of paint.  It is the same paint we used on the trim and doors in the room, Benjamin Moore White Dove.

 Here's after the second coat of White Dove.

 And this next photo is after the third coat of Benjamin Moore White Dove

 And because the little mason jar lights are so adorable, here are some random pictures of them...

To refresh your memory before I show you the final product, here's what we were working with before we got started.

The end result is nothing short of amazing!  It is so bright and happy in here now!  Emma, Owen and I spent a solid half hour dancing to Uptown Funk after we took these pictures because we were so happy to be done!  Well...done with this phase anyways.  We've still got a lot of projects in mind that we'll be starting on this week - so stay tuned for those!

Even without the lights on, it still feels super bright.  And BTW, I begged Brent to let me ditch the ceiling fan for an overhead industrial light but he put his foot down - the fan comes in handy in the spring and fall when we don't want to run the A/C.

The kids are loving their new space!  Lily (our dog) is in this photo - can you find her?  She sort of blends in with all the other stuffed animals.

Shortly after we took this picture, new window treatments went up - as soon as the wrinkles work themselves out, I will be excited to share photos of them!