Playroom

Adalynn and Wesley were thrilled to finally have the playroom done so they could play downstairs.  The other perk was that it gave us some place to go while the guys were in and out of the house working on the kitchen without having to waste gas.  The downside is that it's freezing cold downstairs ...... so if you are coming over for a play-date, be sure to bring a sweatshirt and socks!

 

BEFORE

The basement is divided into two huge rooms.  This room had concrete floors that were partially covered by blue floral carpet duct-taped to half of the room.  The lighting was bad with just two random light bulbs hanging from the ceiling - one from a rectangular cut-out and the other from a circular cut-out.  Quite odd.

 

AFTER

 

We carpeted the full room to add warmth but went with apartment-grade carpet.  We figured we didn't want to spend a lot on carpet when (1) we weren't sure if we would get water and (2) the kids are just going to destroy it over the next few years with spilled drinks, trampled play-doh, and marker stains.  Eddie fixed the overhead lighting by getting rid of the hodgepodge light bulbs and replacing them with the long skinny kind (you can tell I know nothing about electrical).  And he also added an outlet to the room so we could have a floor light plugged in.  We did not drywall this room - that will be a project for much later on down the road.  We figured it was fine to leave the walls as is for now and perhaps we'll drywall when we get the carpet replaced.

 



BEFORE

 

AFTER

 

See that weird random strip of white on the wall in the far left of the pic?  We have two of those plastic strips as a result of getting a few cracks in the foundation repaired.  If and when we ever drywall, that will get covered up.  But in the meantime, it seemed like a good place to hang Adalynn's artwork.

 BEFORE

Here's the view of the same room facing the stairs.  There is this huge storage area underneath the stairwell, but it's an eyesore and we wanted the kids to stay out of the area.  Yet with the way it's shaped, we were at a loss as to how to hide the storage yet still get to it when we need to.

 

AFTER

I can credit my sister-in-law, Jenny, for her fabulous idea to hide the storage under the stairwell.  We got a king-sized sheet, put it in the backyard, gave Adalynn paint and told her to have at it.  I wanted Wesley to contribute as well, but he wasn't interested so I only got his handprints on the sheet.  I added some child-focused words like "explore", "fun", etc. and our one-of-a-kind masterpiece was complete.  It didn't turn out quite the way I hoped; the sheet is quite long and droops on the floor so some of Adalynn's paintings can't be seen.  But it still serves it's purpose.

So come on over and play!