Living Room 2 Facelift

We have this room......it's been dubbed Living Room 2 in our house. It was supposed to be a formal dining room but right now (in this crazy, 2 kids under 2, spend most of our day on the floor kind of life) we wouldn't utilize a formal dining area. Soooooo the room sort of became a cache for everything that wasn't working in other rooms of our house. Sort of a room of misfit furniture and decor. Once we moved in and then Miles joined us shortly thereafter, that room became the bane of my existence. The Hubs was about to start taking a tally of every time I muttered...."Ugh this room is driving me crazy." I kept swapping stuff out and rearranging to no avail.

In it's first days of life, this room was way too dark and way too country. We had a lot of dark furniture at the condo and it sort of made it's way into this room. The kicker here is that this room is the last room of the house to get any light so for most of the day it doesn't have a lot of natural sunlight. DOUBLE ECK!

I needed the room to have a purpose. I knew I did not want a tv in here. It needed to be a room that was for reading, lounging or playing. It wasn't until we had a Farias Family Dinner that the idea for the space started to take hold. With a few little kids running around, I realized all of our toys typically stayed in Bray's room upstairs. This meant that half the family was upstairs playing and the other half was lounging and talking downstairs. DUH.........(ya it took me this long to realize the painfully obvi solution) LIVING ROOM 2 IS A PLAY ROOM!!!! (Breathing big sigh of relief just writing that.)

And then began the transformation. To start, I had a large cabinet sitting in the basement that had been a hand me down. It was dark, but I knew with a few coats of white paint it would provide a ton of storage and a little height to this room. Buh bye big, dark desk!

The pop of light this piece brought into the room opened my eyes and I immediately realized we needed more! So I took down the shelves and removed a small table and went paint ca-ca-crazy!!

Before

After

 

Before

After

 

 

Next up was adding some storage ie. toy storage. I wanted to add a little fun here so I toyed (ya pun intended) with some ideas and thought I would add some hanging baskets. Some homemade chalkboard labels added just the punch I wanted.

Supplies for Chalkboard Labels

Using scrap wood, I cut three identical pieces and painted them white. I pre-drilled holes in the sides so that I would have something to hang them with too!

Sisal twine pulled through and knotted.

The back shot!

I painted a stripe of chalkboard paint right down the middle of each piece and tied them onto the toy box ($3 barn sale tack box) and baskets.

Lastly I used my leftover chalkboard paint and created a little spot above the toy box for Bray to doodle because let's face it.....what's more fun than writing on the walls!!

Taped off the wall and added three coats!!

A reminder to let your paint "cure" for 24 hours before using!!

Then some pillows to finish it off (oh and about a kabillion toys) and.....

Before (Reminder)

Lighter, brighter.....and being used EVERYDAY! Now the kiddos can be playing, drawing, reading and just being kids while I can hang in the kitchen or fold clothes or entertain. Goodbye to split level fun! Now we are all 1st floor bound and I love it!