I am so excited to finally be able to show you our new space. Just a few short weeks ago this was my sewing room. Remember when I shared that I was redecorating this room room and painting the yellow walls. Yes, well shortly after I posted that little bit of news, right smack dab in the middle of the crazy phase of redecorating, it was clear that it should go upstairs and the playroom needed to come back down. That everything had to come to a complete halt.
And there it sat for most of the summer.
Until a few weeks ago when S left again on a trip...which is always my cue for "let's move things around!"
This room sits on the front of the house, just to the left of our front entry and gets the most wonderful morning light.
On the wall that used to hold my sewing machine table is now a great chalkboard wall! (There is also magnetic paint under the chalkboard paint...more on this later.) You know how much I love chalkboard paint. You don't see the dark wall initially from the front door, so it is fun to see people walk in and then turn around to discover it.
I have had these MS flashcards for a year or more and I love the images. So I hung a clothesline of jute twine with the first few letters that Wyatt is studying in kindergarten. We will switch them out as he moved through the alphabet.
I have had the lamp for years - since I moved into my first little house after college. And the chair used to be in the sewing room. It just never made it up the stairs. It is a most excellent reading chair and I love having a comfy place to sit while I oversee homework. I see a little knitting basket next to this chair during the winter.
The round table and little wooden school chairs are gifts from our Oma (my mother). They were in the upstairs playroom already so we just brought them downstairs and gave them a good cleaning.
The previous home owners installed floor to ceiling shelving on the back wall. The shelving is just what we needed for our vintage kids' book collection, games and art supplies. HEAVEN! And sprinkled here and there are some of my favorite vintage toys and thrifted items.
Initially, I was going to move the dining room rug into this room. But the boys have been having so much fun playing on the bare floors. Zane told me the other day, the floors were the best part because his cars rolled so much better without a rug. You got it buddy! No rug. We'll see if they still like playing this much on the floor in the winter.
I think this might be my most favorite part of the entire room...the family office concept. I knew I wanted a long desk from one wall to the other. With our file cabinet(that curiously lived in the craft room before) and a metal shelf borrowed from a closet as supports for two large MDF pieces I had cut, it makes three work stations. Perfect for the older two to have their own homework areas and a space for me to pay bills and organize school papers.
(The silver chair did not end up staying silver and the little wood chair eventually got a paint job. See below.)
Just above the desk is a line of cork. You can buy thin rolls of cork at craft stores. It took three rolls to do the entire length of the wall and will be a great place to tack party invitations, school notes, artwork, pictures...anything!
A few years ago, S pieced together two computers from spare parts and hand-me-downs so that the boys would have a place to do their "research" - which apparently must include touching the screen. Do you see how dirty it is?!?!
One of the bad things about this room is that there is no central light fixture in the ceiling, so I used three $9 desk lamps from Target on the desk for task lighting. But I think on my next trip to IKEA I might pick up a few wall mounted sconces.
Above the cork strip is another shelf to hold an old set of thrifted encyclopedias - great for cutting and gluing projects.
Tin cans hold pencils, scissors, paperclips, thumbtacks, glue, etc. - any supplies they might need for homework. Mason jars full of summer beach treasures from Maine serve as book ends.
I knew I wanted three matching chairs for the desk areas and the very day I began looking on craigslist, the boys found these three little chairs on the curb across the street. Seriously. It pays to have neighbors with good taste in junk. I loved the shape of them, but she had obviously left them outside because the finish was coming off and they were pretty weathered. But with a little sanding and a few coats of paint, they are perfect for this room...and free!
A few things I still have yet to do:
- Decide if I want curtains or not
- Recover the chair seats with fabric
- Move a stool from the upstairs bathroom down so that the littlest member of the family can reach the upper bookshelves
- Paint the file cabinet white
- Find flat screen monitors on craigslist or freecycle (those old one's sure take up a lot of space, don't they?)
I am so happy with how this room turned out. Actually I am kicking myself that I didn't do this three years ago when we moved back from Chicago. The boys have been playing in it ever since we started the project...which is always the case when you move things around. Isn't it?
On Tuesday, the boys came right in from the school bus into this room, sat themselves down at the desk and started in on their homework. We'll see how long that lasts. *wink*
Happy weekend everyone!
