A little playroom reveal

A little playroom reveal

• Friday, May 1, 2015

I've been promising a little playroom reveal ever since I showed you my playroom inspiration board before Christmas. The room still is not done as we are still hunting out a futon and I have yet to hang anything on the walls (decisions, decisions - I want it just perfect!) but I figured it may be awhile before I can safely say that it's done so I thought it was only fair to give you a little sneak peek of the current situation. 

First, a little reminder of what the room looked like before Christmas.

Better than it looked when we first moved in with our addition of bright blue (fun!) paint instead of the very dark burgundy that was more suited to a formal setting (which we were not using the space for). But still a huge work-in-progress. We had not nearly enough storage for all our (way too many!) toys, we weren't digging the cherry trim (again, too fancy-formal for a playroom!), Tom has hated those back wall curtains all along (should have listened to him because I now hate them too haha!), and overall the space just wasn't working. The boys and I spend a lot of time in this room as a) the obvious, it's where all the toys are!, b) it's the only room in the house with carpeting so it's comfy-cozy and c) it gets the best natural light in the whole house so it's totally my happy place! Oh and side note d) it looks out to the front yard so we can be the neighborhood spies ;)

To fix this space up a bit I asked for a playroom re-haul as my Christmas and birthday presents. New storage from IKEA plus a toddler sized table + chairs also from IKEA, new DIY rain gutter bookshelves and new bright white trim! The end result?

Do you love it as much as I do?! Like I said, we still have some finishing touches to do but I'm so far loving how it has turned out! Before we jump into the tour: I've been wanting to tell you about such a fun giveaway I won over on Karina's blog Mr & Mrs Powell! Around Christmastime she teamed up with some other bloggers and did a $250 Christmas Cash giveaway and I WON! I never win anything, I couldn't even believe it! We immediately knew we wanted the money to go to the playroom and we ended up using it for painting the trim bright white! It makes the HUGEST difference in the playroom and I'm SO in love. So thank you thank you one million times over, Karina! xoxo

I think one of my very favorite parts of the playroom is the DIY rain gutter bookshelves! I looked at this blog post before starting but since it's not really a tutorial we sort of just winged it. It turned out to be pretty easy!

The boys spend a lot of time here on these poufs reading books and I love that! This is actually not the permanent home of the poufs as they'll live at the foot of the futon when we get one but the boys love sitting here so much that I might have to consider some sort of seating under the shelves.

For our main storage solution we used the IKEA Kallax system shelves. These are awesome because you can buy cabinets and drawers separately and install them in whatever cubbies you want! We chose to do two cupboards and two drawers for each unit and then we used these Better Homes & Gardens bins from Walmart for storage on the bottom. I love that everything (besides the large toys on top!) is hidden!

The little table and chairs (both from IKEA) were not part of the original plan but I saw them set up in the IKEA showroom and just couldn't leave without them! I am SO glad we ended up getting them as the boys sit here ALL the time! They do puzzles here, color here, "eat" here...we love it!

We keep a little art center on one of the end walls where the boys coloring books and markers/crayons live. My original plan was to hang these right above the table for easy access but I knew that one day I wanted a little play kitchen in this playroom and the best space for it is going to be where the table currently resides. SO when we one day do get the kitchen the table will move to the middle of the room in front of the bay window and the kitchen will replace the table's current spot. Because I knew we'd be making that change sometime soon I opted to keep the art center where we wouldn't have to move it later.

^Those clear bins? The best extra storage! Not all the toys fit in the cubbies (much to my dismay! - we have GOT to purge the playroom!) so I ended up buying a pack of clear bins from Sam's Club and we store cars, Mr. Potato Head, Little People, Legos, etc each in their own bin. I love these because it's easy for the boys to find the one they want and pull it out.

A little side note here. All those toys on top of the Kallax unit? We bought ONE of them (the police SUV) and the rest are hand-me-downs from Tom's siblings. I promise, promise you we do not wildly spoil our children and buy them a new toy every time we are at the store! And they get as few toys for Christmas as I can manage ha! We are just really lucky to get a lot of hand-me-down toys.

In case you are interested in our basic storage...

Fabric storage bins in the left Kallax store trains, musical instruments, play dishes, and large cars (not pictured).

The cupboards house large floor puzzles and some baby toys. I didn't take pictures of what is in the drawers but the ones on the left hold random toys like the doctor kit, soldiers/pirates/dinosaurs and the drawers on the right hold board puzzles.

The fabric bins in the right Kallax store Little People toys (airplane, zoo train, fire truck), MegaBloks & more MegaBloks (yeah two HUGE bins full!) and little baby toys.

The cupboards hold jigsaw puzzles (so many!) and a few random toys like blocks and hammering set. The drawers all hold mostly little, random toys.

Of course one corner is a sports corner for our little sports-obsessed boys. These all get daily use! My picture is a little deceiving as we have a large bucket filled with balls that also sits in this corner but I'm on the hunt for one that fits the space better so I moved it out of the picture view haha! Which is why you can see an indent in the carpet from where the basketball hoop normally sits in front of the ball bucket. I guess I'm not the best stager!

This room gets the best light in the morning when the boys are awake and so that's when I had to take pictures and you have no idea how hard it was to get a picture of the sports corner without Phillip in it! I kept having to grab him and put him on the other side of the room then run back to snap the picture really quick. I wasn't fast enough most of the time because this kept happening:

Okay well that basically ends our tour and I'll just leave you with a few more photos! 

And just in case you are like my friend who (after I sent her a picture of the new room!) asked me how my playroom is always so clean...

...it's not! I promise! Usually it's even more of a disaster than this! We are really working on the whole "one toy at a time" thing but the boys still haven't got that down ha! It's only clean during nap time and bedtime and besides that it looks like this ^ or worse! I wish it always looked perfectly clean but then what would be the point of it being a playroom, right?!

kallax shelves // kallax cupboard inserts // kallax drawer inserts // fabric bins // mini table: IKEA (similar) // mini chairs // fabric poufs: target (similar) // rocking horse // basketball hoop // t-ball set // golf set // spice rack (holds coloring books) // bygel rail & buckets (for crayons & markers) // paint color: behr's fountain spout (520C-2)* // curtains

*Sample paint chips are no longer available for Behr's Fountain Spout in Home Depot stores but you can still request for them to mix it for you!