You may have seen on Instagram stories or read in my last blog post [here] that I am transforming my home office into a playroom! I was a couple days into this transformation when I saw that Chrissy Marie, Arin Solange, and Paisley and Sparrow [other home decor/lifestyle bloggers] were hosting a March Room Refresh Challenge.
Since I was hoping to finish this room quickly anyways [I want to start using it!], I decided to partake in the challenge! The challenge runs through March 15th and the winner of the challenge with the most fun room refresh will win $250. You can read all about the March Room Refresh Challenge on Chrissy Marie’s blog here.
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The Why Behind the Change
Was I sad to give up my home office with a view of the lake in front of our house? Yes. Was I using my office? Not really. Here are a few things that led to the change:
- My office has beautiful pocket french doors [see pictures below!]. However, when you have small children who are pretty attached to their mother, this is a problem. Anytime I was in my office, Allison was banging on the door [and she quickly learned how to slide open the pocket door because we currently don’t have a lock on it]. Hence, I couldn’t actually get any work done.
- Allison mostly plays in our family room, which is completely open concept. This was fine until she started crawling, and then WALKING. We have no way to contain her in the family room and of course, she’s not content to just sit there [yes, we could get a play pen, but we have enough space in our house to make a playroom!]. Also, being the organized/neat freak/slightly OCD person that I am, having the toys all over the family room was starting to wear on me.
- We have a bonus room upstairs that I was initially planning on making the playroom; however, after walking AND carrying a child up and down the stairs over and over to go get her a snack, get her milk, get myself a snack, get my water, I decided I would prefer for the playroom to be on the first floor.
- We have also been thinking about FINALLY making our breakfast nook an actual eating area instead of a wasted “sitting” area. One day, it just hit me that we could use my desk as the table in this area because it is an actual dining room table [this is it!].
Inspiration Pictures
Must Have Items
As per usual, I did some searching for playroom inspiration. After saving a bunch of pictures, these are the items that I will definitely be incorporating into our playroom!
- Couch/Sofa [we need somewhere to sit too!]
- Kid’s Table and Chairs
- TV [necessary for us to keep our sanity]
- Storage
- Chalkboard
- Area for books
- Kid’s Kitchen
Layout
In our house, this room sits right off the front entry, so I want it to be beautiful as well as functional [similar to the above picture from The Coastal Oak!]. And because of the french doors, we’ll never be able to “close” the door and hide the mess. The room already has built in cabinets that we will use for storage.
I plan to put the sofa on the back wall right across from the doors to the room. The kid’s table and chairs will go in the center of the room in front of the sofa [no need for a coffee table!]
My Mood Board
And without further ado, here is the mood board I put together for our playroom. I wanted to incorporate some of the furniture we already had in order to keep the budget as low as possible. You can see I also like to include paint colors on my mood boards, so on the right are the colors in our house [or very similar ones!]. For more info on our paint colors, click here!
Can’t wait to show you all the final reveal and hope to see some of you in the #MarchRoomRefresh Challenge! Be on the lookout for a full room design next week!
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