Thursday, August 21, 2014

Birth Of A Backpack Wall

With back to school in full force, I snapped into super organization clean out mode. Some people get this urge in the Spring, but I get this way at least once a month. Being just a tad bit Type A (well, maybe more than a tad bit) clutter makes me anxious. Living with a busy three and a half year old who's daily mission is to seek and destroy, a busy nine month old who thinks the kitchen cabinets are her playground, and a husband who has slight hoarding tendencies, let's just say that the house makes me anxious a lot. 

One of my huge issues became how our island and our doorknobs were starting to become catchalls for all of our bags. School bag, cooler, lunch box, purse, laptop bag, diaper bags...it was getting out of control! So I decided we needed to remedy that ASAP.

I began to scour the internet for ideas. 

My husband got the nervous twitch he gets when I start to scour the internet for ideas.

After much debate, I finally landed on something that I liked on Pinterest. I showed the hubs my plan and after much persuasion that this project was life changing and will look fabulous when I was done, he begrudgingly happily headed off to Home Depot to get me supplies. 

Here's the space I chose for our project. This is the hall that enters from our garage and contains our pantry, coat closet, and laundry room entries. It's a fairly long sized plain wall, and it was hidden from the main area of our house. I thought it would be perfect. As you can see, even in my before shot we have few bags hanging on doorknobs. Boo!


After measuring and drawing up a plan, we tore off our baseboard and began framing out our wall. The original plans we had to tweak a bit as we decided to not move our light switch. The whole height of the framing is about five and a half feet. (I was nervous this would be a little high, but with ten foot ceilings and testing out that my son would still be able to reach the height of the hook, it worked out fine). 


Next up, chalkboard inserts. We bought a sheet of chalkboard, cut it to size with our Dremel, secured each one in place, and surrounded the edges with black caulk. Some people like to use chalkboard paint here, but this seemed a little easier to me and one less thing to paint. 


Next step was the caulking and sanding portion of the project.

Once we knew everything was nice and smooth, I strolled over to our local Sherwin Williams to pick up some paint to match our existing trim. Our project ran into a little snag when the associate told me that they no longer make the paint our trim is done in. I let that sink in for a few moments (we have A LOT of trim work in our house), then decided to just come to terms with the fact that I would have to paint all the trim in that area to match and had the nice associate whip up something he assured me would be similar to the rest of our house.

While he frolicked away to mix up my order, I had a moment of inspiration and decided if I was going to have to be painting more than I thought I would I might as well go all in. I checked out a few chips off of the color wheel I had with me, chose a neutral beige for the remaining wall space left to paint, and hoped it coordinated with everything else.

Next, I headed home with my almost doubled paint order to start on my now much larger paint job. It's all good though...I was about to be in clutter-free island heaven!


The trim took about three coats of paint before it looked perfect. And you don't need to have me bore you with a million painting pictures.

Now onto the fun part...hardware! The project is almost done. I know you're just as excited as I am! 



We installed the hardware, re-hung our peg board and our gallery of wall photos, and voila! Our project was officially complete! Wahoo!!


 I loved how it turned out. I love how everyone now has their own little spot for their bags. I love how a formerly plain looking useless space in my house now looks a little more complete. And most of all I love that I can now actually use my doorknobs for their intended purpose. 





















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How to build a backpack wall. Quick and easy back pack wall design.


3 comments:

  1. I am looking to do a similar project. What was the cost? And where did you find the pegboard?

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    Replies
    1. Hi! Thank you so much for reading! Here is a rough breakdown of cost:
      Lumber & Hardware - $45
      Paint & Supplies - $80
      And the pegboard came from Pottery Barn a few years ago. Maybe 2009?

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  2. What kind of wood did you use to frame the wall out with?? Did you you molding or actual lumber? Molding ontop? I'm a new DIY -er and have no clue haha. Any help would be great as I have ripped off everything on one wall in hopes to make the " perfect " backpack wall for the kiddos

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