For today’s post we would like to introduce you to our friend, artist, and designer of fantasy themed children’s rooms, Jason Hulfish. He is located in Tampa, Florida where he has been transforming living spaces into works of art for the past twenty years. Please read below as he shares his most recent project “Willy Wonka’s Playroom.”

A few months ago I was contacted by my client with an interest in transforming a challenging dead space into a functional kids playroom. They expressed that their son was fascinated with the original Willy Wonka movie and thought that this would be a great theme for the room. Loving the idea I immediately began to put pen to paper and came up with these initial concepts.

The clients loved the idea and direction along with the idea of making it wacky, fun, and over-the-top. As with most of my concept sketches, this is just a starting point and not necessarily a clear definitive objective or target. Most great designs tend to take on a life of their own and become more organic to the space and the personalities of the clients.

The first real starting point of a custom room is to begin construction of the furniture. This is always the most challenging and time consuming part of the project. I have three basic rules:
1. It has to be safe for the child
2. Must function effectively as the piece of furniture it replaces
3. It has to be cool!

The second stage of the project is painting the mural to encompass the overall design and accommodate the soon to be installed furniture. I typically paint the mural after the furniture design and placement has been determined. As mentioned before, with an ever changing design things can be added and subtracted along the way. I am best served to paint the walls last because that affords me the most flexibility.

Once all the furniture and mural work is complete it is time to install all the components and unveil the finished product to the client!

The completed room was aptly named “Gobstoppers Imagination Emporium” and is complete with the following features: tunnel with hidden entrance, bookshelf using the first initial of the little boy, custom chalkboards, whiteboards, hidden storage cabinets, mail slot, beanbag toss, and an art easel!

A special thanks to the wonderful people over at Studio M for allowing me to share my work with you! Please be sure to check out more of my art on my website. Also be sure to follow my latest projects on Facebook and Twitter!

Look forward to next time,