The boys's room

Now that we are in the house of our dreams (or as close as we can get within our means), it's time to make it a home.  We moved in on a weekend in January when it got down to 13 degrees with sleeting rain and no power, gas, or water to the house.  Let's just say there was a misunderstanding with the seller of the house.  I'm making it my mission to paint, decorate, design...To put it simply, I'm going to create our perfect home.

It started with my boys's room.  Twin boys born September of 2012 need a fantastic place to sleep.  With them being born so close to National Speak Like A Pirate Day (Sept. 19) we thought a pirate ship would be appropriate.

Fortunately we started with a blank canvas.  Please ignore the cat boxes and storage bins.  This room was mostly storage before we started this project.

 As you can see, we have angled ceilings in our home.  That came in handy in this room.

I started with string to help make the shape for the ship's shape.

Then I used painters tape to mark the shape I was finally happy with.

Then I did a test area to see if I could figure out how to paint wood planks on the wall.  With the help of a wonderful worker at my local hardware store, I got the perfect brown paints.

I wasn't happy with the cream or orange colors, and I knew that wasn't a good version of a knot hole.  So after I painted over the test area I decided to wing it with what little I learned from this.  There's the base brown.  Only one coat.  I figured I'd use the variations in paint to highlight the 'wood'.

I knew I wanted a cannon ball blast, but I wasn't sure how to do it.  So I left this spot so I could figure it out later.

I lightly brushed a darker brown to add some depth then started adding the plank lines.  I didn't tape each line, but I used a guide line so I didn't get too far off.

I finally decided how I was going to do the blast hole.  I also added 'nail heads' instead of worrying about knot holes.  I knew I didn't have the artistic ability to get into that.

I added a light sky blue for the...you guessed it - sky and a darker blue for the ocean.  I'm rather proud of the little boat in the distance through the blast hole.  I sponged white for clouds.  This also gave me the chance to hide some of the imperfections that come with only putting one coat of paint on a wall.

I found a ship's wheel on Amazon.  If you noticed in one of the first pictures that we had a quilt hanging rod that the previous owners left...we turned that into the ship's mast.  After hanging a few hooks and tying a ton of knots (thanks to my aunt for being a boy scout leader) we are almost done.

All we have left to do is add a pirate flag and a Union Jack flag and we are done!  (My husband was born and raised in England so we found it appropriate to add the Union Jack.)