Dablet's Playroom - Phase One

The design, and redesign, of Dablet's playroom has been the center of attention around here for quite a while! When we sold our printing company early this year, we moved a large chunk of equipment and paper back to the house that quickly took up our formal dining room. I always knew that we would never use our formal dining room because we have a large open concept eat-in kitchen...but I did not expect it to turn into a storage room! It was especially disturbing to have it become storage because its one of our two front rooms when you first walk into the house...bad impression?! I think so!
This is what we had for a while as an eye sore while we tried to shift things around, purge, and clear out the room:

This is what can happen to your life quickly!

Clearly, that's not what anyone wants to live with! Once Dablet was interacting with everything around her in a much more hands on and mobile way (crawling too!), it because obvious that this room needed to be a playroom! We cleared it out and painted the "builders beige" walls with Benjamin Moore's Gray Owl (one of my FAVORITE grays!) and immediately the room looked better! 

We found a fabulous chair from IKEA that was supposed to have legs on it, but we never screwed them in!

Find this chair online here

It was the perfect height off the ground for Dablet to be able to safely climb in and out on her own. I'm contemplating getting a second one of these chairs for her in our family room and making a fun bright slipcover for this one! She clearly loves it!

Kids and tags!!!

This Solsta Olarp Chair was the perfect reading chair for her reading nook! I brought down a bookcase I was originally going to use in my new office because the teal popped so well against the gray! Once (some of) her books were on the shelves it brought SO much color into the room! That's one of the things I love about the gray backdrop; it's a perfect canvas for all kinds of colors. It's essential to have lots of color in a child's space:

I found this piece at HomeGoods!

Because the opposite corner in the room is going to be her crafty area, we decided to put her main toy storage on the same wall as her reading nook. Of course the most important part to any playroom (aside from the color!) is the functionality. Toy storage has to be more than just easy for me to quickly return order to the room, Dablet needs to be able to use it herself! Safely too!

Again we went to IKEA for this one! The Trofast Toy Storage series is PERFECT for allowing you to get what you need based on what you have to store! Different colors, and bucket depths (all mounted on easy sliding brackets) make a custom look possible!

Added bouns, Dablet has NO problem emptying everything out herself, and I have no problem quickly putting things back together!

Her foam ABC, 123 mat will soon be replaced by a rug, but the pop of color has been welcome!

So far I have this wall done, with the opposite wall "under construction"! The artwork that Nicole ap! created for us is being framed and I cannot wait to finish off the look! Dablet is accepting appointments to come check out her playroom, as long as you don't mind getting on the ground and enjoying it with her! This project has allowed me to think like a kid again, and lay to rest thee stigma against having playrooms as soon as you walk into someone's house. Maybe you'll disagree with me, but when this look is done I am confident it will be a nice sight to walk in the door to!

Mommy Monday - Paint & Playroom

Happy Monday everyone!
It's been a crazy several days, productive, but CRAZY! Our dumpster kitty, Meow, had back surgery last week and is home now "enjoying" her digs that she will have to deal with for the next four weeks.

Also to add to the chaos, we finally had our yard sale this past Saturday!! I felt SO good to purge, and we will donate the rest to one of our local organizations. The best part...we profited over $800!!! The two rooms these funds will go to first in our home makeover are my office and Dablet's playroom! Speaking of home makeover, I painted our half bath! I was true to my word that I'd end up starting with the smallest room in the house!
I used Benjamin Moore Peacock Blue and a lot of 1.5" blue painter's tape! I reminded myself why people often resort to hiring professional painters. It's not that the painting itself it hard, but you spend at least half of your time prepping and touching up!

This was the "before" and the Koi painting from our Honeymoon was the color inspiration

Prep, edging, and during photos

Final look! Amazing how much different a coat of paint will make a room!

With paint on the brain, I think I have a background color for Dablet's playroom! Benjamin Moore's Gray Owl has been one of my favorites for a long time! It's a pale blue gray (at least in my house!) and with all of the other colors I want to use in the playroom, and the chalkboard paint wall, I think it will be a perfect canvas!

Now for those yard sale dollars!! 

I have been browsing blogs all weekend for inspiration and I found some at one of my favorites Focal Point. Lynda lives in Arizona, and I think I might just need to get my butt out there and figure out a way to get these fun finds back to me! It's a good thing I'm headed out that way this October!!

I NEED this for my office!!!

I'm slightly in love with the black and white fabric trim on this chair! 

Photos sourced from Focal Point

Another fun thing I tracked down this weekend perusing IKEA's website for Dablet's Playroom was this:

The bins come in all different colors, you can place them in any orientation with the grooves that you wish, they also have a white frame and you can always paint it! It's from the TROFAST collection and this frame runs just at $114. I can picture putting words and numbers on the bins for teaching not only clean up practices, but also what's what!

Two other requirements for our playroom creation are a reading nook and chalkboard paint!! Here are some of my favorite pins for my ideas! You can find more on my Playroom Board!

See the pin here

See the pin here

See the pin here

See the pin here

I hope you all have fabulous success with whatever projects you have going on, and please be sure to share photos! I'd love to see!