Playroom Project

A few months ago, Hubs and I were at Home Depot and saw a sign for Daddy & Me workshops, with Hubs commenting that he and Buddy Man should attend sometime.  So, shortly after Mother's Day, when a friend posted on Facebook that her husband and little man had gone to Lowe's together and participated in a similar workshop to make her a Mother's Day gift, I took to the web for more information.

In addition to fun classes to take with your kids, Lowe's has outlines and directions for dozens of fabulous projects, complete with material lists, printable patterns for those of us who are less than artistic, and tons of ideas for satiating the thirst for a DIY weekend!  When I saw a picture of this playroom, I knew I just had to create a special place for my boys to play. Of course, at this point in time, we'd tackled several projects that were a little higher on the necessity scale, learned that I had been accepted to Nursing School full time (and that we'd therefore need full-time childcare for two), and planned on a couple of family festivities to celebrate some important events.  Our money tree wasn't quite keeping up.

Still, I priced everything out, and I was able to complete this project for about $70 and one weekend!  Granted, I made some concessions to the materials list, and Hubs already had many of the tools required.  But now, with just a few special touches, my little guys have a fabulously whimsical, yet still gender neutral and timeless, place to call their own and escape with their imaginations!

We started with a pretty bland space.  Our basement is L-shaped, and the rear-most "section" is about a 12-by-12 space blocked off with an extra-wide babygate.  It's wonderful since it's not easily visible when you first come into the basement, so for entertaining purposes, I can still keep the general look and feel consistent with the remainder of my house.  And, since this large "nook" is in the back and contained with the gate, it's relatively easy to keep all the toys in one place, which was paramount for me!

I started the project by moving everything off the walls and taping off the entire back wall.  I also waited until naptime to do this, as I knew it would be the most time-consuming part and that Buddy Man would want to help if he saw me "playing"!  After taping, I painted the entire space with Valspar's Sea Kiss.  Rolling the majority of the wall, and brushing the edges, it took an entire quart for that one wall.  And by entire quart, I mean entire.  I was scraping the paint bucket for enough to cover a few of my touch-up areas!

Once the blue paint was dry, I marked my studs using a stud finder, to ensure that my trunks would be centered on my trees and placement would be pleasing to the eye.  Using my stud marks as a guide, I taped the printable stencils Lowe's provided for the tree trunks to the wall.  Then I removed a huge round clock we have hanging in the family room and traced it on a piece of cardboard so I'd have a perfect circle and traced overlapping circles above the trunk stenciles to create my trees.  I brushed the entirety of the tree canopies with Valspars Kiwi Splash, and didn't worry about making it perfect.  Visible brush strokes provided texture and dimension, so once again, I used only one coat.  While I painted, my husband used a dremel to cut out the tree trunks.  The instructions recommended a jigsaw, and that would probably have worked better, but we didn't want to buy a special tool, and I liked the imperfections that the dremel provided.  It also made for much easier and quicker sanding once the trunks were cut.  We saved the bulk of our money in this area: we purchased wood of a lower quality than was recommended, and rather than buying three products to prep, stain, and seal the wood, we bought one 3-in-1 product to cut both time and cost in the project.  I let the trunks dry overnight in order to let the stain really sink into the wood.

The next morning, we double checked our wall studs and drilled the tree trunks into place.  Then I used the wooden leaf stencils my husband made me (again, Lowe's provided PDF stencils on the project webpage) to randomly stamp the leaves all over my trees.  We saved money in this area as well, buying sample sizes of Valspar Gecko and Twist of Lime, rather than a quart of each.

When it came time to style the area, I got pretty lucky!  I'd chosen a color palate of blue and lime green to complement the colors in the wall.  I already had a small navy blue window covering (left over from our last house) in the window above this space, and someday I'll add some green grosgrain ribbon to tie it all together.  My sons also had several toys in the colors I wanted to feature, so I pulled out the toys and stuffed animals that would be part of the decor and put them aside.  I purchased one Cubeicals cubby storage unit (in espresso) at Walmart, and swapped my old metal cube storage (in the before picture, above) for another Cubeicals unit in my husband's closet.  I also purchased some fabric drawers in True Blue and Spring Green for organizing toys.  Now our assortments of blocks, balls, legos, cars, wooden trains/trucks, and Mr Potato Head each have their own dedicated drawer!  Toys that didn't go into drawers were each assigned their own cubby in the Cubeicals units.  The Notre Dame signs that were previously in the space were relocated above the larger of the two cubby units.

On the opposite wall, I used cup hooks and fishing line to hang paper lanterns I found on sale at Pier 1 above the smaller Cubeical unit that was previously in my husband's closet.  Stuffed animals found a home in the crib I used as a baby in my own playroom!  Again, I selected a few choice toys in blue and green to accent the cubby unit's top shelves.  Eventually a storage rack for puzzles will adorn the top of the unit.  I also have some blue and green pictures frames with photos of the boys to create a small photo collage above the unit and take up some of the white space.

Finally, I found some precious child-size rockers for the boys to sit and looks at books.  I placed a pile of pillows, including these found on sale at Pier 1 between the chairs, along with a basket of books to read.  The finishing touch will hopefully be this craft table, as a Christmas gift from the grandparents.  So far the space has been a huge success!  Buddy Man loves to go play in his special playroom and actually enjoys organizing his toys after playtime.  I'm daily impressed that he picks his things up and stores them in the correct spot, sometimes without prompting on my part!  Yes, he sometimes gets bored after putting only five legos away, but he's building skills and showing such enthusiasm that I just marvel at his development!  It's also pretty amazing at how much longer the playroom manages to stay tidy with the new use of the fabric drawers!