A wall of gears
For the first time in his life, my oldest son has his own room. At first, he didn’t know if he was going to like sleeping all alone without anyone to talk to as he falls asleep. He’s a very social boy, and we had to convince him that he really didn’t want to sleep with all four of his siblings (which would be the epitome of awesome, in his mind).
I set about to make a room that he would be proud of, something like felt like his. The room is small, but has a lot of empty wall space. When we moved in, I had painted the lower part of the wall to look like washed denim. I love it and didn’t want to change it (it was a lot of work!), but the upper walls were bare and needed a bold, interesting graphic. I thought about it for awhile, rejecting Jonathan’s proposal that I draw an ocean mural, and came up with the perfect solution: an arrangement of various gears scattered across the wall.
Gears! They’re a designer’s dream. Here’s how you can get them on your wall.
1) Find images of gears that you like. You can find a million different gear outlines on the internet from sites like this one. Use the power of Google to find slews of gear graphics.
2) Project the image on the wall. I used my husband’s projector for this, but you could use an overhead projector as well, or print the gear and create stencils (but that sounds like a lot of work).
The workhorse
3) Lightly outline the image with a pencil. I projected one image at a time, starting with a large gear in the center of the wall and adding more on either side as I liked, keeping balance in mind. Just eyeball it!
Outline the gears
4) Paint! I used acrylic paint, but this got kind of tedious because each gear required more than one coat. Ugh. Use higher-quality paints than I did for faster results! I used black, grey, silver, and a burnt sienna to tie in with Jonathan’s dresser, which I painted years ago in the same color.
That’s it! Jonathan loves his room. Here are a few more photos, including the pegboard project wrote about.
A wall full of gears--awesome, interesting, and easy!
The other side of the room, gear-free
The room in progress
Very cool indeed! Great idea for mechanically minded young people. 🙂
Lucky guy, awesome room 🙂
I’m sure the young man will be quite happy in his new room 😉
Brilliant idea!
The room is AWESOME!!! You did a great job! 🙂
No joke. When you coming to decorate my boys rooms??? Pat yourself on the back. You’ve done good 🙂
You know, one of these days I’m totally going to show up on your door (runs to look up Orange Rhino in the phone book). 🙂
Love his room! it’s age appropriate but you won’t have to change it in 5 years (a difficult balance)…I could see this growing with a boy until they’re off to college. brilliant!
That’s exactly what I wanted. He’s at an in-between age (8) so if I went with the little boy stuff, he’d be bored with it in a year or two. But if I went too big-boy, it wouldn’t feel like his. I’m happy to say that he LOVES it! I overheard him telling his sisters, “My room is so COOL!” Aw,..that makes it worth it all.
I’m loving your decorating kick! 🙂
Thank you! Now I need to get some writing done. 🙂