Submarine Themed Room Paint

I’m wrapping up my son’s submarine themed (and sea creatures) room, and how fitting that it’s Shark Week, right? I will give a full reveal this week, but this is how the submarine part of the room came together: bubble wrap painting and redwood chair rail. I was inspired by Denver Aquarium’s walls – gray and industrial. I immediately thought of Pinterest-inspired bubble wrap painting to try to recreate the look.

I prepped with tape (didn’t have to be perfect because I was putting a chair rail over it) and I tested out the bubble wrap. I thought about using old bubble wrap, but I was worried some would be popped so I bought a new roll at Lowe’s along with some gray Behr paint in the sample jars.

Then it was time for the wall. I started with the dark gray and then when it dried, went over it with the lightest gray for the second coat.

Then for the chair rail, I searched for the flattest wood I could find because I wanted it to look like metal, and that way I wouldn’t  have to cut angles for my edges either. After a lot of discussion, the Lowe’s guy thought redwood was my best bet. It was pretty rough and splintery, but it sanded down pretty well.

He was nice and cut them to my specific wall sizes. A couple pieces needed to be tweaked, so I just used my miter board and handsaw.

I mixed the Behr medium gray paint with BB Frosch chalk paint powder for the rails. I love painting with chalk paint, and for this project I wanted to hide the imperfections in the wood and try to create more of a metal look.

For the install, I used small nails (no glue) because the boards were thin enough and I didn’t want to damage the walls. A Lowe’s employee gave me a tip: hammer the bottom of the nail tip a few times before nailing into the wood so it won’t splinter – it worked! I put nails near the top and bottom every 6 to 12 inches.

Because I was going for the industrial/submarine look, I didn’t even punch and caulk the nails. I just left them and painted over with the gray. The industrial look makes it easy-peasy!

Then I needed to spruce it up with some bolts. So I went to Lowe’s hardware section, and after quite the search, found a few cool things. Gorilla glue worked well with these.

The bubble wrap painting took some time, but the chair rail was the easiest one I’ve ever done.

Total cost: $66.62.

The full room reveal is coming soon. And Happy Shark Week! (my son informed us that this is how he wants to be greeted this week)