Diy Kids Learning Center ~ Sprucing Up the Living Room with Some Paint!

A Diy knocking out three birds with one stone! It came time to spruce up the living room with this simple Diy that has been lingering in my mind for some time now. This is the side of my craft chest that is located in the living room. I got it off of Craigslist last year and it is in this awful barf green stain color. I'm not even sure if it is actual stain, but who ever did it did a horrible job with it. The cabinet itself is a beauty and someday I have plans to strip the whole thing down and stain or paint it in colors I will enjoy. Until I can do that I am going to make use of the side that is exposed and create a learning center for the Little's, while adding color to the space, and covering up some of that awful barf green stain!! I like to think of it as a band aid to the problem, haha!

One thing I love about this piece is that it's in two pieces. I had thoughts of designing my own chest with that feature before finding this treasure. The front is just amazing with so much character! One of these days I'll share a picture with you of it. I may just end up painting random things on it over time instead of doing one or two colors over it all.

My original idea for the learning center was to get wooden letters, paint them or glue scrapbook paper to the fronts, and hang them on the Little's wall. I placed an order on Ebay for some Wood letters and got these thin paper ones instead. I was so bummed when they came in and thought the Seller scammed me. Turns out I read the listing wrong. Since returns are a pain in the butt on Ebay I kept them with no complaints. They were thrown in a box for about a year before I knew what to do with them. Finally, they came in handy!

I placed the letters on the side of the chest using tape until I got the layout I was happy with. With a simple pen I out lined boxes around them. Then removed the letters and put them out of reach of the Little's for safe keeping.

Next, my paints were needed. I grabbed mostly primary colors and began painting inside the boxes. A random pattern was applied until all boxes were filled in. This was hard to do being down low because the Little's kept grabbing at the paint bottles and touching the wet paint on the craft chest. I would have much preferred the wooden letters to hang. I could have done them out of reach of curious hands!

At the end of the day there was a sigh of relief! I was finally home free with the hardest part!! ......or, so I thought :(
While I had to wait for the million layers of paint I applied to dry I went to wash the dishes. Within about 5-10 minutes of walking off the Twins decided it was a good idea to wreck mommies hard work! It was so nicely done before they had touched it. I didn't even get the chance to take a picture of it :(

If any of you ever wondered why mothers, especially stay at home mothers, don't/can't get anything done, this is a prime example!! I almost cried when this happened and was about to give up at this point. After taking a breather, I assessed the damage and got my paints back out to redo what they destroyed. After overcoming this set back we went to bed to allow it to try before moving on to the final step. The easy part......

I reapplied the letters onto the painted surface and began applying the white paint in a blotting technique. Some of the color was allowed to show through, which is what I wanted. Once the paint was mostly dried the letters were removed.

Here are the final results. It came out nice despite the smeared paint here and there from the Little's touching it while it was wet. Some touching up needs to be done, but I will save that for another time. I may add shapes to the surrounding area and numbers on the bar in the center. Until next time!

Besides the Little's getting in the way this was so easy to do and fun! Feel free to take the idea for the Little's in your life or to do it at school/church. Thank you for reading my fellow Steemian's!

Have a beautiful and blessed weekend! Make sure to get some rest ;)