Our New Play Room

This month I finally accomplished a project that I've been working on for a while now! I converted our formal dining room into a play room for the children with an office/sewing area for myself. I drew inspiration from Play at Home Mom, as usual, to create a bright, open, and inviting play area for the kids where materials were displayed in inviting and accessible ways. You can see the incredible play rooms of AK here and RL here. I also found some great ideas on Pinterest and came up with a few of my own too.

Here is a before picture of our dining room... beautiful but not the best use for the space since it was only used a few times a year. Our house is on the small side, and with 3 kids we need to make the most out of all the space we have!

 

And here is our new playroom! I was able to incorporate pretty much everything that I wanted. There is a space for our light table, magnetic dry erase board/felt board, a way to display the kid's artwork, a table for art projects and play, an area for dress up/dramatic play, an art supply area, a toy storage area, and space for my twinkie jacks boutique sewing projects along with an office area.



This area of our playroom houses a large magnetic white erase board for drawing and playing with magnets (animals, letters, numbers, etc).  I have it resting on top of 2 itso storage bins from Target (I LOVE how you can customize these bins with different sized shelves and storage buckets to suit your needs) and mounted to the wall with super strong 3M velcro strips... I'm pretty much obsessed with those things and use them for hanging/mounting lots of items. Next to the bin I have a strip that I cut off a plastic shoe organizer to hold an eraser and washable dry erase crayons and markers. I also have a magnetic felt board that we can put right on top of our dry erase board for felt story play. I love that I can get two uses out of this board and when we're not using it for felt play, I can just roll it up and put it away. In the itso cubes, I have our various magnets, felt stories and a few of our light table supplies (wedgits and soon-to-be magna-tiles that our son is getting for his birthday).



Right next to our dry erase board/felt board, is our light table. The table was a DIY project where I converted our old train table into a light table; you can read about how I did it here. The sides of the light table hold our various train tracks and we store our trains in a bin underneath it. Right behind the light table I mounted a mirror to the wall so it could reflect the light and various objects that the kids play with on the light table. They can also check out their dress-up play in it. Lily LOVES looking at her reflection right now and gets a huge kick out of this mirror! I also stuck some circular mirror decals on the wall around it to catch some more of the light and reflections.



Next to the train table is a large cabinet that holds my printer and some of my craft/art supplies, as well as some of the kid's overflow craft supplies. We actually already had this cabinet (2 of them in fact) and it was out in the garage and worked out perfectly for this room.



In between the cabinet and light table, I hung some peg board up to hang some of the light table and craft supplies. It's at the perfect accessible height for my oldest, but just out of reach of my 15 month old twins which, right now, is a good thing! I used plastic paint cans that I purchased from Michaels (another great PAHM idea) to hold the supplies. In this area I have translucent colored gems, googly eyes, shells, cotton balls, craft sticks, pom poms, pipe cleaners, feathers, translucent shot glasses in a variety of colors and shapes purchased from the Dollar Store (great on the light table) and brightly colored straws.

 


On this wall I made a space for the kid's artwork to be displayed. I hung two dignitet curtain wires from IKEA and used mini wooden clothes pins to hang the artwork. I love how it came out and Jackson has been so proud to see his work displayed prominently like this.




I purchased the table and chairs set (Sansad table and Kritter chairs) from IKEA for the kids to play and do art projects at. I love the Sansad table! It's long rectangular shape makes it larger than most kid's standard square tables, which was a must for me with 3 kids working at it! And it also has legs that adjust to 3 heights so it can grow with the children. So far it's working out wonderfully and I love seeing them all play at it. Underneath the table is a splat mat to keep the carpet safe from messy art projects. I made it myself using an adorable owl print in a laminated cotton.




I wanted Jackson to have something living to take care of, so I created a "natural area" by one of the windows. I have an African Violet that he waters with his little watering can, and some rocks and twigs here (can be used in art projects or play). I may move our shells over here as well. 



On the table I put this very cool terrarium that I found that Jackson also takes care of. I love it! I just need to find the perfect little plastic gnome or something to put inside it.

 


On the other window sill I have the children's crayons set up. They are set up in old, repurposed baby food jars that can be easily picked up and put on the table. I also have some "baby crayons" here but my girls seem to prefer the real ones!

 


Over by this window I have some hooks (more 3M!) for dress-up and dramatic play items. We have Jackson's super hero cape and mask here, along with his fire fighter costume from last Halloween, some animal masks (a tiger mask from the zoo and 3 super cute woodland creature masks made by my friend Stephanie), a baseball helmet, Jackson's light saber and pirate sword, and a baby doll and doll items (bottle, cup, bib, etc). I plan to add some dress-up costumes/princess gowns for the girls as they get older. Jackson is getting a real doctor's kit for his birthday and that will also go in this area.  



Right next to that is the toy storage and art supply storage area. The toy storage is created simply from turning a Closetmaid 8 cubby system on its side to make it easy for the kids to get their items out (and put them away!). I purchased a few storage bins for it also. This doesn't house all of our kids' toys (they still have some in the living room - the play kitchen and work bench) and some toys in their rooms. But, I wanted a place for some of their educational/imaginative toys. So, it holds things like puzzles, little plastic animals and trucks (great to use in sensory bins), Mr. Potato Head, blocks, some toddler toys, etc. On top of the shelf I have the Play Doh tools and a little container that holds stamps and post-cards to use for mailing activities.



Above the toy storage, is the art supply storage. I used the Bygel rail system from IKEA and love it!! I hung 2 Bygel rails and used a bunch of the plastic storage cups that go with this system to hold our various art supplies. I also used S-hooks to hang our scissors and some hanging wire baskets to hold some of the larger supplies (paint, glue, Play Doh, glitter). This system was very inexpensive and is so functional! Jackson can easily take one of the cups off the rail and bring it to the table to use it and then put it away himself when he's done. Everything is organized and it makes clean up easy. In the plastic cups you'll find: window crayons, paint brushes, water color paints, finger paints, washable markers, colored pencils, homemade heart shaped crayons, stamp pads and stamps. As with the light table supply/craft supply peg board area, Jackson can reach the Bygel rails but they're still out of the girls' reach. 




Above this area I have some more artwork and some photos displayed, and a little white board with my to do list.



Last, but not least, is my little area! Before the make over I had been working on my sewing projects on the dining room table and also had my desk in the dining room to work on my computer. We rearranged and moved the furniture to other locations, and I got a new desk (Micke from IKEA) that was long enough to function as a work area for both my sewing and my computer. I love the huge drawers (one side houses sewing supplies and the other office supplies) and the work surface is great and plenty big! I got a matching little set of drawers to extend the surface a bit and it also has a filing cabinet to hold my patterns and documents for my business - perfect! The only thing that I couldn't fit into this room/area was (all of) my fabric and yarn. But I have those stored elsewhere since I really don't need to take up space holding all of that when I only need to actually USE very little at a time. So there is room in the white cabinet to hold supplies for my CURRENT project(s) and I just swap it out when needed!







So there you have it! Our new room of play, creation, art, learning and fun! The kids LOVE this space and so do I. I cant' believe how different the room looks after this transformation. It's lighter and brighter, and I love how organized it is! I know you must be thinking, surely with 3 kids (2 of which are 15 months old) it must never stay this clean with everything being so open for them to get into. But really, it's very easy to clean up! There is a place for everything so it's very easy to put everything back in its place. This organization has made a huge difference! And my almost 4 year old is pretty good about helping to clean it all up. He likes knowing where everything goes and it makes a big difference in his willingness to help!



Here are a few pics of the kids enjoying the playroom!


Jackson creating a 4th of July craft.



Sophia and Lily playing with Dr. Seuss characters at the felt board.

Jackson building with wedgits at the light table.



My next (current work in progress) project is making over Jackson's grown-out-of baby/toddler room into a big boy room. We're doing a Star Wars theme. It's almost done! I have one more (somewhat big) DIY project to complete, a pillow to sew and some artwork to hang and it'll be finished. I hope to have it done by his 4th birthday party coming up in 2 weeks!

Pin It