Living Room Turned Playroom

Description

We moved into a house with a formal living room on the main floor that we decided to turn into a playroom for our son.  (We have a large family room open to the kitchen that functions as our main living space.)  The playroom has been a work in progress and continues to change as he grows.

Design Inspiration

I looked at a lot of ideas on Pinterest & Project Nursery & combined the ones that I liked best.  It needed to have plenty of easy storage for toys and be nicely decorated since it is the first room you see from the front door.

Decorating Style

Transitional & contemporary

Project Details

This project has evolved over the 18 months we've lived in the house and I'm happy to call it "finished (for now)".  The room is cute and very functional.  Liam can easily find his favorite toys which helps him destroy the room in under 5 minutes and then can picked up in under 5 minutes thanks to all the bins & baskets!

The bench Kallax is from IKEA.  My mom helped me sew the cushion for the bench & pillows on the futon with fabric from Fabric.com & custom cut foam from FoamFactory.com.

It has held up really well & I love the burst of happy (but not too bright) yellow.

I found the grey & white stripe plastic bins & the dinosaur bin at HomeGoods and the bins inside the bench are from Target.

The ABC wall art is a set of 4×6 Printable ABC Flashcards from Etsy.  The graphics were cute and colors worked well with the playroom so I decided to use them to create a picture grid wall.   I printed them on card stock on a nice laser printer.  I tried to save paper/ink the first time by printing 4 per page, but ended up getting the scale wrong so I highly recommend a test print & measure of 1 sheet before printing them all.  I used 1" painters tape to layout the grid and then hung each frame with Post-it Command strips (more details are available on my blog).  Overall it ended up being 33″ tall & 44.5″ wide and cost ~$60.

The wire for hanging Liam's art from school is great - it's easy to change out as he makes new pieces.  It is simply a DIGNITET curtain wire from IKEA & RIKTIG curtain hooks.  The curtain wire is not the easiest thing to put up and it really helps to use a GOOD pair of wire clippers for cutting the wire to the right length & solid drywall anchors.  I still had one of the ends pull the anchors out of the wall slightly when I tightened the wire.

Favorite Items

The reading nook is probably my favorite part.  The shelves are picture ledges Ribba from IKEA.  Liam loves books & is also a very organized little guy so he likes to put the books back on the shelf after he is done.  Most of his books are visible now so we aren't stuck reading "Go Dog Go" over and over.  The extra basket holds all the other books that didn't fit on the shelves.

Advice

A playroom on the main floor has been so nice to have and can reflect the style of your house if you use complimentary colors (instead of the "kid" colors).  I re-purposed furniture we had (futon) and then used inexpensive pieces from Ikea & lots and lots of storage bins to help keep it neat & clean.