Have furniture that needs a makeover, but it’s too heavy or cumbersome to move? I’ll show you how to create a temporary, DIY spray booth inside your house so you can paint inside using a sprayer without making a mess or ruining the carpet.
It’s been a long time since I’ve shown you a glimpse of my son’s room. If you’ve ever lived with a 12-year-old before, you know why! Real-life tween bedrooms sure don’t look like they do in a Pottery Barn catalog.
In fact, the last time I photographed it was more than three years ago Jackson was deep in his Star Wars phase.
He’s still a fan, but lately he’s been craving a more age-appropriate space to chill out, listen to music and avoid his parents. While Jackson was away on a weeklong school field trip, I decided to start working on his tween room makeover.
This is a sponsored post, and it contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience. Read my full disclosure policy here.
Step 1 of the makeover: give his bed a makeover with my Wagner FLEXiO 4000 paint sprayer.
Every month, I’m sharing a new DIY project in partnership with Wagner, along with Kim from Salvaged Living. Be sure you check out her post on how she used her Wagner paint sprayer to solve a problem every pet owner can understand.
We’ve had the sage green bed since Jackson was a baby and his nursery doubled as our guest room. It’s a wood Bassett cottage-style bed that we bought new, but the soft green color didn’t exactly scream tween boy.
My “client” decided he wanted a dark gray bed instead, and he chose Fusion Mineral Paint in Ash.
I always knew I wanted to paint the bed with my Wagner FLEXiO 4000 sprayer. I originally thought I would take the bed apart and haul it downstairs to paint outside.
But some stubborn and impossible-to-reach screws in the bed rails derailed that plan. (See what I did there?)
Normally, I would just use Wagner’s Studio Spray Tent to spray paint furniture inside. But the bed frame was just a little too big to fit inside the tent, so I had to come up with Plan B.
Since I knew painting the bed with a brush would take forever, I decided to create a temporary DIY spray booth in his room. My Wagner sprayer is the fastest way to paint furniture — 12 times faster than a brush — especially something like this bed, which has grooves between the beadboard panels.
I know it’s scary to think about spray painting furniture inside. You’re probably worried about making a mess, ruining the carpet or floors or getting paint all over the walls and the rest of your furnishings. And you probably think the prep required to paint with a sprayer indoors is too time consuming.
But with a spray tent or the right masking materials and a sprayer that creates little overspray, you can put those worries aside. And even with the necessary prep required to create an indoor spray painting booth, you still save time over brush painting.
With my husband’s help, we were able to mask off my son’s room. We honestly spent more time trying to remove those screws on the bedrails.
DIY Spray Booth Supplies
You’ll need the following materials to mask off a room and create a DIY spray booth indoors:
- 3M Advanced Masking Film (for easiest application you’ll want to make sure the film is long enough to cover from floor to ceiling)
- painter’s tape
- large, heavy duty canvase drop cloth
- large plastic drop cloths
How to Turn a Room into a DIY Paint Booth
To prevent any chance of getting paint anywhere we didn’t want it, we masked off the entire perimeter of my son’s room with masking film from ceiling to floor. (We did not cover the ceiling, just to the top of the walls.)
While the masking film is still folded, use painter’s tape to secure it to the top of the wall. Then pull it down to cover the entire wall. The film will cling to walls. You can drape film over furniture, as well, though you may have to add a second layer midway down the wall to make sure everything is completely covered.
For added protection, you can also tape the masking film at the bottom.
If you go to my Instagram story highlights and click on Paint Sprayer, you can see video of the entire room masked off.
To protect carpet or other flooring, place a large, heavy duty canvas drop cloth under the furniture you’ll be painting. Use books, wood blocks or bricks as risers to lift the furniture off the floor.
Cover any other exposed flooring with plastic drop cloths. Overlap drop cloths for added protection to ensure there are no gaps. You can also tape the drop cloths together with painter’s tape. You can also use tape to secure them to the floor, walls or baseboards.
Tween Bed Makeover
Now comes the fun and easy part — actually painting the bed!
The Wagner FLEXiO 4000 sprayer comes with two different nozzles — the larger iSpray® Nozzle, which is great for walls and ceilings and the detail finish nozzle, which is perfect for furniture and smaller, more detailed paint jobs.
On a larger piece of furniture, like a bed, I might normally use the iSpray® Nozzle because it covers more space in a single pass. But since I was painting indoors and wanted to minimize overspray, I used the detail finish nozzle.
With Wagner sprayers, it’s easy to change the direction of the paint flow by adjusting the dial on the nozzle. In the photo above, I used the vertical setting to spray the bed posts, then switched to the diagonal position to get under that lip on the footboard. I finished the footboard panel using the horizontal spray position.
In total, it took just 30 minutes to paint the entire bed. Once the first coat of Fusion Mineral paint had dried, I spent another 10 or 15 minutes doing few touchups in spots I had missed. And then I was done! (Fusion Mineral Paint does not require a topcoat, but you can seal it with hemp oil or Tough Coat that can be sprayed or wiped on.)
A few tips if you’re planning on spray painting indoors:
- Please choose a low or no-VOC product or wear appropriate protective equipment.
- When you’re spraying, it’s helpful to turn off fans and air conditioners so that they don’t move plastic dropcloths and masking film. You can also close off any air vents to prevent so you have better control over paint when you’re spraying.
- Wear socks or shoes when spraying because bare feet can stick to plastic drop cloths.
- Before leaving the spray booth or tent and walking in unprotected areas, check your feet or shoes to make sure you’ve not stepped in any paint.
What a transformation, all for the price of a jar of paint! His little boy bed now looks like one of the pricey beds in the Pottery Barn Teen catalog.
I used the same quilted coverlet on the bed, along with a couple of pillows we already had. I did pick up a new striped pillow and blanket for the foot of the bed from Homegoods, but I’m really trying to be mindful of budget and use what we have as we continue this tween bedroom makeover.
I can’t wait for my tween to get home from his trip to see what his bed looks like now!
Pin This! Tween Bed Makeover with a Paint Sprayer
Pin This! Create a DIY Spray Booth Inside Your House for Painting Furniture
Don’t miss these other projects using Wagner products:
Leave a Reply