By Gene and Katie Hamilton

Even if you're not an artist, you can create a whimsical one-of-a-kind kid's bedroom décor using a paint-by-number wall mural kit that comes with a pattern and transfer paper. Think of the wall as a giant page out of a coloring book, and you have a big box of new crayons, and you get the picture. While wallpaper is always a popular way to decorate a kid's room, a wall mural makes it extra special.

The Web site www.elephantsonthewall.com has a large selection of mural designs, including nursery rhymes, jungle scenes, circus trains, cowboy towns and underwater scenes. There are many more designs, several with door huggers, patterns designed to surround a door, and options to customize the design with your kid's name.

For a mural kit that's 6 feet tall by 8 feet wide, you'll pay around $90 plus the cost of acrylic paints, which will run about $60 for the paint and brushes, depending on the mural's size. The kit comes with a color guide for the acrylic paint, which you'll find sold at craft store. A decorative painter will charge about $721 for a basic kid's room design.

Depending on your color scheme, you may want to paint the walls. But if they're clean and a color you like, you're ready to add the mural. Move furniture away from the wall and protect the floor with a drop cloth. The project involves taping the transfer paper and pattern to the wall using blue painter's tape, then tracing the design onto the wall with a ballpoint pen. The fun starts when you take brush in hand to paint the shapes and designs. It's about a weekend's worth of work, shorter if there's more than one of you wielding a brush.

Not interested in doing this yourself? You can find a painting contractor who has the skills and tools to do it right. Click here to get to Home Advisor, a local referral service that matches homeowners with local prescreened contractors.

That sums it up. Knowing the average cost to paint a wall mural lets you compare doing it yourself with what you can expect to pay a contractor. To customize the cost to where you live add your ZIP Code in the cost box.

Improvement and Repair Cost Updated 2019