The challenge with moving into a house with more space is budgeting the money to decorate and furnish every room. The playroom needed to look decent, since it's separated from the family room by only a pony wall, but I didn't want to spend very much money on it since, well, it's the playroom and the kids trash it all day long. So, I gave myself a tiny budget and then made it my business to find cheap furniture. Now that the playroom is done, I finally have one room in our house that is completely finished to my liking.
Here is a picture of the playroom before:
Ugly green paint. Wood chair rail. Ugly brown paint on the
ceiling (why?). Cute
rug from overstock that we bought the minute we knew we were moving into a house with a playroom that needed a rug.
Here it is after:
I primed and painted the chair rail, then painted the bottom half of the wall white, which kind of makes it look like wainscoating. The top half of the wall is Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter.
The big white bookcase was a craigslist find. I added the little round feet to it to make it look more expensive...a trick I learned from Autumn at
Design Dump.
All the ugly toys that don't match are piled up against the pony wall so that you can't see them from the family room.
This was a brass chandelier that I bought off craigslist for $5. I spray painted it with that coral/orange Valspar spray paint at Lowes. (By the way, B hates this chandelier. He says "this isn't Dr. Seuss's house". So, the chandelier will be coming down as soon as we find a ceiling fan to replace it with. Sad. I love my orange chandelier.)
I spray painted this little wood train. It used to be red, yellow, blue and green. I like it better now that it matches.
Yarn covered wood letters. Don't know where I copied this idea from. Somewhere on Pinterest...
This glider was sitting on my neighbor's porch for a few weeks, so I casually asked her what she was planning to do with it. When she told me it was going to the dump I asked if I might have it. She was happy to have me take it off her hands, and I was happy to have it. I didn't even have to reupholster it. It was already cute like this. Score!
The drapes are white linen with lime green pom pom trim. Hand-made by me. I used gathering tape like Emily from
Jones Design Company.
I braided some of my leftover yarn to make the tie backs.
I found this chest off craigslist. I painted it white and made a cushion for the top so it could be a window seat.
Inside I keep all the toys that require adult supervision.
These short bookcases are craigslist finds.
The kid chairs are craigslist finds. The table was a kitchen table from craigslist. I cut off the legs to make it shorter, and painted the legs white.
The animals are silhouettes that I printed on scrapbook paper and then cut out. The little glass figurine was my Grandma Anderson's. It used to sit in her living room on an end table. I used to sneak in there as a kid and pretend to eat the porridge out of the little girl's bowl. When Grandma died, my Mother asked me what I would like from Grandma's house. I requested the statue with the girl eating porridge.
The alphabet was a
free printable that I cut out and modge-podged onto a piece of plywood. I love all the vintage-y looking images.
So, that's the playroom! I took a picture because it will never look this clean again.
