Steve and I recently decided to move our kids bedrooms around. This was one of those projects that sounded like a really good idea until we got started. It took aaaall day. About an hour into moving everything around, I was reminded why I hate moving: We have too many things and it takes forever. At this point we were already committed, so we kept going.
My daughter moved into the biggest room (other than mine and my husband’s of course), my son moved into my daughter’s old room, and I am upgrading my home office to my son’s old room. My home office/craft room is essentially in a 35 square foot closet at the moment; it’s definitely time for an upgrade. The problem with moving all the rooms around like this is that my daughter got a much bigger room than my son. Right now he’s four and she’s six, and even though he really doesn’t mind the smaller room, we really felt like we needed to add something to his room to make it cooler. That’s when my husband decided to make a Nerf Gun Wall.
Like all the best projects, this one is really pretty simple.
What you need:
- Pegboard
- Drywall anchors and screws
- Power drill (it makes life easier)
- Tape measure
- Level
- LED lights
The first step is finding the right kind of pegboard for your project. This is a matter of personal preference.
There are a lot of different types of pegboard available, but we went with this one:
Blue Hawk Steel Pegboard. Why did we decide on this one? I honestly don’t know. I think Steve just likes the way it looks. This is available at Lowes, it comes in 16-inch x 16-inch tiles, and we used 6 of them for this project. One selling point for this type of pegboard is that once it’s mounted on the wall, there’s still space behind it for the LED lights to fit. Also, this doesn’t have any sharp edges or corners, which is great for a kids room.
If you decide to use the pegboard tiles, they’re fairly easy to install. (I say this as someone who observed someone else make this Nerf Gun rack).
Instructions:
1. First, you’ll need to mark the wall where the anchors will go. (Steve is a big believer in always using drywall anchors.) The first tile is the most difficult.
Each of the tiles has holes for mounting them to the wall, so you’ll need to hold the first tile up to the wall and mark the holes (be sure that everything is level). Before you make any holes in the wall, measure again to be sure you’re drilling in the right spot.
I apologize, a couple of the pictures are blurry. Steve refuses to do reshoots.
2. After marking the walls, you’ll pre-drill your holes for your anchors.
Add the anchors into the wall.
My husband really likes to use these drywall anchors from Lowes:
3. Mount the first tile to the wall.
After the first one, the rest of the tiles will go up much quicker.
4. After all 6 tiles are up (or however many you decide to use), you can add the LED lights behind them. My husband ordered LED lights from Amazon.
5. The final step is to decide how you want the Nerf Guns displayed. We just used standard pegboard hooks and accessories from Lowes to hang up all the Nerf Guns and bullets.
Pretty easy! This is definitely a project that you can get through, start to finish, in an evening.
The entire setup is pretty cool, but my son’s favorite part it the color-changing lights.
That looks really cool! Love the led lights too.