As most of you know, we recently moved homes. For me, I think the hardest good bye was to our beautiful playroom. I spent countless hours visualizing the space, making mood boards, and searching for the right decor pieces (not just buying items on a whim to fill the space). It really was a true labor of love.
As a young mother, it also held so many memories for me. A place where we spent most of our days laughing, learning, and bonding as a family.
As sad as I was to leave our office turned playroom behind. I was really worried about losing our built ins/storage. For us, these built ins were key to staying organized!
We are currently renting so I knew we wouldn’t be adding this organized dream. This issue created a fun challenge for me. I needed to find a way to store all our toys, but also put a stylish spin on in. Remember all that decor I spent months searching for? Yep, you bet I wouldn’t be putting it into storage! LOL
The Solution
I decided I would make the extra bedroom our playroom. This space has a double door closet with built in shelves on either side. YAY!
After we moved in, I started to unpack and quickly realized how much stuff we had. I purged as much as I could but I still had so many toys left over without a home.
My first thought was to put a shelving unit in the middle. I originally used the one I had in my previous playroom closet. It worked, but it was short and wide. Above the shelf there was so much wasted space. I knew I needed to utilize for this spot for the closet to function more efficiently.
I decided to move the horizontal unit to the laundry room and purchased an IKEA unit that was a major game changer! You can find the details HERE.
After we assembled the shelf, everything was finally organized and looking great! It’s amazing how adding a vertical storage unit made this closet come together. The kids could now access the side shelving with ease, where as before they could barely get by to select a toy.
Removable Wallpaper
Okay, okay! Onto the wallpaper!
The wallpaper is totally unnecessary, but oh my gosh doesn’t it give this space a little something extra?! It now feels like an extension of the playroom instead of boring storage!
The application was also SO EASY!! This type of wallpaper is removable and similar to a big sticker. It comes in a normal size roll width and I used about 3 rolls for the back and sides of this closet space.
The hardest part was cutting around the built in shelves. However, I thought it looked best to continue the paper to the wall because I didn’t want it to end abruptly within eyesight from outside the closet.
To Apply
Peel the top part of the wallpaper off the backing about three or 4 inches. Then, press the top of the wallpaper against the wall. Taking your hand, rub down the middle of the roll and then work your way to the sides. Press hard and do not overlap your rolls. To avoid bubbles, try to lift lightly and reset the wallpaper as little as possible. Also, you will want to peel and smooth as you go! Do not peel the full roll off the backing and then apply! This is bound to lead to disaster! The sticker backing is very strong and will easily stick to anything! (I got a tiny strip in my hair and that was not full to pull out)
To cut I used a x-acto knife to cut once it reached the end of the wall.
I also learned that you’re not supposed to layer each of the rolls! This makes the wallpaper too heavy and it will mostly likely fall down. (This happened in Scarlett’s room where I applied the same temporary wallpaper.) To fix that issue I used the extra command hook stickers and lined the top of the wallpaper. This helped it stay, but to avoid this issue I suggest not overlapping when you apply!