Playroom Before & After

I had two months to whip this cottage into shape before the school year began, and it came right down to the wire. Also, I had just a little more than $1000 for budget for the entire house (not counting my new loveseat and chair), so let’s just say I had to be creative.

The last room to be finished, and certainly the one that required the most attention, was a tiny basement room that was previously used for storage. 

Clearly, there were some major ick factors with this room. The walls were painted stone and wood—with a hole right into what was to be my bedroom closet. The tile floor was broken and not exactly appealing. The ceiling just wasn’t there; it was wood beams with pipes jutting in and out of them. And wow was it disgusting. I didn’t think there would be an end of the grime to clean up in there. When my mom came up to help me clean, we moved some pallets that had been on the floor and discovered most of the previous tenants had at least six legs. Perfect spot for a playroom, no?

Well, here’s how it turned out.

I hung up fun wall hangings and the girls’ artwork. If you look on the far left, the two paintings of Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz were painted by my artist friend David Baratta (see our birthday post). The other two pictures are from another friend, Alan Muroaka, who plays Alan on Sesame Street.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my dad nailed up plywood on most of the walls and ceiling. Around the edges where he couldn’t extend the wood, I stapled up fabric, which ended up a little more pink than I anticipated, so I will add some large stickers to break that up a bit later.

I put up contact paper on the plywood, painted the ceiling and laid down some super cheap vinyl tile floor ($.28 a square) that was so easy to put in I was able to cut it for the entire basement. I also papered the back of our little white shelves (for toys) and the pre-existing shelves (for their art and craft supplies), which I’ll organize those in a prettier way later.

On the pipes I couldn’t cover, I adhered with big chipboard stickers. We also couldn’t cover the window area with plywood, so I was left with a gaping hole where I ended up putting in a faux windowsill flower garden. I’ll have more on that in projects later.

I also painted and covered the two closets with shelves for extra game and dress-up clothes storage.

What do you think?