One of the major things that attracted me to our current home two years ago was this small room off our entryway. It has french doors that open into the family room and it has a large window with a decent size window bench. I guess it was supposed to be a dining room or maybe an office, either of which might have been great for us, had it been just us. Now add two growing children and their even faster growing supply of toys and this makes a great space for a playroom. And this is exactly what we did, we made it their playroom. It's worked out perfect that past few years for the boys and for me (and my sanity). Despite the fact that this space has shelving units and organized/labeled cubbies, it usually (every minute of the day the boys are awake) looks just like this. And this just happens to be on a good day.
We pick up when we can, and to be honest if some nights I just don't have the gusto to do that, I simply close the doors and forget about it until the morning. Now, this is an easy way to live if you happen to be a normal, settled, not moving, don't have your house on the market, won't get a call at any moment for a house showing family. This we are clearly not. After two showings and a third one approaching, I decided this space needed a flip, for two reasons. (1.) The toys...I needed to regain control of them and (2.) I wanted a potential buyer to have their own thoughts on what this space could be for them and/or their family
(as in, it needed to be a fresh palatte). So, during Owen's nap-time yesterday, Jack and I went to work. I pulled out all the toys, the train table, the books and took down
the swing.
Ahhhh! Better already, right?
I boxed up a bunch of toys (and all those darn puzzles that O loves to pull down and dump, everywhere...those needed to go go for now), actually two big bins worth that I now have stored in my front closet, just in case, we are all in need of some fresh, haven't seen in awhile toys. I also stored the better toys (aka the boys play with a lot and for longer periods of time) in our coffee table/chest or brought to our basement (another play zone).
Moving on....
These two sweeties then helped me clean the walls, the trim and the baseboards. With two boys who love to ram their trucks, cars, skateboards, trikes and plasma cars into the walls (cause it's fun, I guess?), we had a lot of scrubbing to do.
Owen helped scrub the walls with me along with intermittent breaks to suck on his rag.
And J walked around pointing out all the dirty spots. I guess I like this angle for taking pics?!?
Let me just say, Magic Erasers are amazing!!
Now I needed to stage it a bit, so I brought up a table and chairs that I already had. This set is very special to me as this was the first table Pat and I had when we were first married. We ate so many meals together at this table...just the two of us. Good memories. The rug used to be in my family room under/in front of the couch.
Ahhh....much better!
Another bonus, it gives J a racetrack to zoom around on.
Sorry about these pics, it has been gloomy and gray here for the past few days.
And I don't know how to take pics in gloomy and gray.
This window bench, my mom and I made when she was here over Thanksgiving. I followed
this tutorial, which was rather simple. Every now and then, I find one of the boys laying on the bench reading a book...very cute in my eyes.
I still need to take down the
artwork displays, but that means then I need to patch holes and repaint. I need more of that gusto before I take that on. I am trying to use what I already have in an effort to not spend money and honestly, it just seems plain ole' silly to buy stuff when we are moving. I need to go look in my uber messy, filled to the brim basement storage to see if I have any artwork that would fit in this space.
But, I think this will work for now....
