Baseball Wall - How to

I asked my daughter-in-law, Tricia, to give us some step by step instructions on how she created Hudson's Baseball Wall.

Labor of love

                My mother in law asked if I would guest blog for her about my son’s wall creation, I am not nearly as creative and talented as she is so this was most certainly a labor of love for me.

                I want desperately to be creative and artsy but the majority of the time my things are rushed and, end up looking like the work of a first grader. I am an English teacher after all and my creativity comes in the form of metaphors and words.   I try very hard however, when it comes to my children’s rooms. It is as if the cuter I make their living space the more love I am showing for them. So, My husband and I saw a picture of a baseball wall and we are huge baseball fans,( as is our little boy) so we decided to make it happen in our new home.

                The first task was to tackle the seams. We could not figure out a manageable way to draw the seams so Brandon ended up measuring different places on the wall and free handing the arch for the seams. Once he had the pencil marks in place I was going to stain the wall, to make it look like a dirty baseball of course.  I had trouble buying the right stain so my BRILLIANT mother in law called with one of her “hacki-shack cures” . She said to mix water with a darker beige paint that we had used in the living area. She gave me exact amounts to try but I ended up just adding water to the paint until it looked “about right” . Then I took a dish rage and a bowl of the paint mixture and went to work. I started at the top and went down, since it was drippy anyway. I rubbed more around where the seams were to make it seem dirtier there,  this part was fairly simple. I did it while Brynlee slept and Hudson was busy watching me and playing on the computer.  The only thing that was a problem with this part was that I left the bowl of paint on the floor while I was on a step stool and even though I knew it was there I stepped right in it when I climbed down. L  Hudson thought this was hilarious and wanted to paint his foot too.

                Next came the putting up of the red seams. The paint mixture took about an hour to dry so when Brynlee woke up we went to Jo anns fabric store. This project was taking place the weekend before Christmas and who knew that so many people would be at Jo anns?   I found the red laces I was looking for but the line to have things measured and cut was crazy long. They were taking numbers…. The next number to take was 14 and they had just called put number 3! Did I mention I had two kids in tow and it was a rainy cold weekend before Christmas??? I found a sales guy that told me if I found an unopened package I could just purchase it without being measured. I found the only package of red laces left and went to wait in line. It did n’t have a price so I was worried it was going to have to by Hudson’s Christmas present but, it was going to be worth it. It turned out the whole spool was only 12 dollars ( I would have paid at least twice that not to have to wait in line with the kids)

                When we got home I measured exactly six inches each and cut the seams for the wall. I started to use E 6000 to glue them on the wall but it just wouldn’t stick. So I resorted to finishing nails. This part was pretty easy once I got going. I put a larger nail in the center of the lace and then tiny finishing nails on the ends.  As with everything, it would have taken about half the time had I not had to stop to change a diaper and take a 3 year old to the bathroom and get a drink and so on and so forth…. The laces made it much easier to make sure the seams are straight. I am glad I decided not to paint the red.  You can dab a bit of red paint on the nails but they are really not very noticeable.    I was pretty proud of the finished product. When I asked Hudson what he thought about his new wall, that had taken all day to complete, he said,
“ looks great mom, can we do a hockey puck next time?”