Lucy’s Art Center

If you follow me on Instagram you have seen bits and pieces of the progress of the playroom in our basement.  When we first moved into our home we didn’t have enough furniture to fill the spaces so our basement was left alone for a while and became kind of a storage unit.  We didn’t have a dining room table so I made a make shift playroom in the dining room.  It worked perfectly since we spent pretty much all of our time in the upper level of our house.

After we finished painting the basement we decided it was time to make the upper level more adult friendly.  We moved all the toys downstairs and it really motivated me to finish decorating the basement and put the playroom together.  My mom had given me a few pieces of furniture from my childhood and so I started the process with updating the furniture!

I was so in love with this adorable table when I was a little girl and I couldn’t wait for my children to use it.  It was perfectly fine the way it was but I wanted to give it a little makeover and make it my own.  I loved the idea of painting the top of the table with chalkboard paint.

I started with giving the table a coat of primer.  Note: If I were to do this again I would have done two coats of primer because the top coat color was very light and needed multiple coats.  I learned my lesson. 🙂

I let the primer dry over night and once it was dry I took it out to the garage and gave the top of the table a generous coat of chalk board paint.  I spray painted it on and didn’t tape anything off because I was going to paint the rest of the table anyway.  Once it had a chance to dry I gave it another coat of chalkboard paint just to ensure that it was on there thoroughly.

The next day I started hand painting the table with a beautiful color, Ardent Coral.  I had to do multiple coats, as I said before, to completely cover the table.  I haven’t done so yet but I am thinking about putting a coat of polyurethane onto the coral areas of the table just because it’s going to be well used by the little one.  With how long it took me to paint the table I want it stay as nice as possible. 🙂

To complete Lucy’s art center I went to Target and bought tin containers from the dollar bins.  I was specifically looking for the silver tins but came across these adorable decorated tins.  They were absolutely perfect for the space.  I purchased 4 of them and then my mission was to decide how to hang them on the wall.  I have seen many different ways on Pinterest and I was thinking about doing the coat hanger route.  I went to Home Depot to price some different coat hangers but just wasn’t finding anything I loved.  I came across these ceiling hanger swag hooks and decided they were perfect.  I love the intricate design and they are super easy to screw into the wall.

In a previous post, I talked about these amazing Wooden Laser Cut Frames that I’m obsessed with.  I love how the frames, table and tins all tie together and how it makes the most adorable little space for Lucy.  My daughter is still young (18 months) to really create her own art work but she is already having so much scribbling on the top of the chalkboard table with chalk..  (Although she seems to think she can draw on anything that is black! haha)

I hope that Lucy spends hours at her little art center when she is older and I can’t wait to display her art work in the frames.  Seeing the world through the eyes of a child is really a remarkable thing.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!  It’s warming up here in Minnesota, and I hope this weather continues to stay nice.  Lucy is big fan of the outdoors so we hope to play outside a lot this week!