IKEA Playroom Makeover

The playroom has been a project we kept putting off. Mainly because there is just so much crap stuff in there. In it, there were 2 canvas toy boxes filled with stuffed animals, a stair step IKEA shelving system and an old garage cabinet without the doors on it for storage.  The rest of the toys were either in laundry baskets or placed around the perimeter of the room.

Here are a few pictures of what it looked like before.

Here are the elements we wanted in this room:

• Lots of storage off the ground so they could have some space to play
• Desks for the girls to do projects and homework
• Space on a wall to draw and be creative
• Area to display their artwork

I looked for months on Craigslist for matching wooden desks and some large storage unit.  Never found what I was looking for.  We were planning a trip up to Northern Virginia one weekend to see SteveSongs with the girls so I asked Hubs if we could just pop in to IKEA.  He knew there was just no "popping" in, but being the awesome husband that he is, he agreed.  As luck would have it, we found everything we were looking for!  We picked up 2 bookshelves, 2 sets of hanging wall buckets, a picture hanging kit with clips and several other goodies that were not play room related.  ;)  We had to make another trip up there to pick up the desks and chairs.  

Hubs built the bookshelves and secured them to the wall side by side.  I had some canvas cubes that used to hold baby items on the changing table so I dusted those off and arranged them on the bookshelf.  I had tons and tons of unorganized toys so I went to Michaels to pick up some more canvas cubes. That still wasn't enough storage for all the little sets of toys so I went to Walmart and picked up 32 Sterilite clear storage boxes. I organized, and organized, and organized until all the toys had a home.  I have separate bins for tiaras, jewelry, magnetic dolls, cars, Play Doh accessories, balls, wands, figures, etc.  The canvas cubes hold the larger toys like Barbies, My Little Ponies, Play Doh, stuffed animals, etc.  Now the girls can take one bin out, play with it, put it back in and store it away before getting more stuff out.  I left the top and bottom shelves for the toys and games that would not fit into the bins. The IKEA storage shelf next to the 2 bookcases acts as a mini divider to the desks and additional toy storage.

We mounted a mirror along the bookcase so they could look at themselves when they got dressed up. Their dress-up clothes are neatly tucked away in the walk-in closet.



We moved the book sling next to the closet.  I need to move the growth chart but haven't gotten around to that yet!

We put the desks side by side along one wall and mounted a wire system to hang their artwork. Using the Silhouette, we cut out vinyl stickers to say "Masterpieces!  by Avery and Riley".  We also cut out princess crowns and the girls' names to put on the back of their chairs. Mounted below the wires are pink and purple cup holders which contain crayons, colored pencils, markers, pens, pencils, glue sticks and scissors.

Along the other side wall is where we created a dry erase crown board.  You can see how we did it in the Princess Crown Dry Erase Board post. 

 

The girls are totally loving their new playroom. Things actually stay organized and I am LOVING that!   

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Princess Crown Dry Erase Board

The girls love to draw so I wanted to incorporate a large drawing space in the playroom for them to express themselves. First I thought of doing a chalkboard with chalkboard paint, but my youngest daughter has allergies and I didn't want to take a chance that all the dust from the chalk would make it worse.  After doing some research, I decided on a dry erase space.  I didn't want just a plain old rectangle, so I started playing with some designs.  I wanted something to cover a large amount of space to draw on but also something fun. I decided on a princess crown. I wanted to paint the base and cut out some white gloss vinyl balls to put on top of the crown.  Hubs cut out the 3 circles with the Silhouette.

I purchased a pint of Rust-Oleum Specialty 27-oz. Specialty White Gloss Dry Erase paint from Home Depot for $19.98.  The rest of the stuff I had on hand from previous projects. First Hubs took all the wall plates off.  Then he measured the area to paint and marked the points of the crown. I taped the outside edges of the crown using blue painter's tape. 

Once the tape was secure, Hubs and I took turns rolling the paint on with a small foam roller.  It was very thin paint.  We could still see some green from the wall after the recommended 2 to 3 coats so we decided to use the entire can.  6 coats later, we have this shining beauty!!

When we began this project, I didn't think we would be putting 6 coats of paint on. With 6 coats of paint, the crown is raised off the wall slightly so if you run your finger along the outside of the crown, you can feel the painted edge.  We stuck the balls on, but since it is slightly raised, you can see the indention of the pointed part of the crown.We could razor cut around it, but it's not that big of a deal for us. In hindsight, I would have cut circle stencils out with the Silhouette, stuck them on and painted the balls on.

I am not sure why I didn't take a picture of the crown after we stuck the balls on.  I certainly had enough time since we had to wait 3 days for it to dry completely per the instructions. There was a lot of "Mommy, is it ready yet?" and "Mommy, has it been 3 days???"

Here is what the crown looks like today after many uses. 

Your wall around the dry erase board will get smudged, but it's well worth it when your little ones show you their masterpieces!  My 5 year old loves to draw this picture. We showed it to her on the Internet one evening and she laughed hysterically.  It shows up every now and again on the drawing board.  ;)  I have to admit, it is pretty funny!

Here are some things we learned that I hope will be helpful to you.

1. Test your dry erase markers out on a small area before using it.  The girls have had portable dry erase boards in the past where some markers they used left permanent marks. We tested ours along the outlet edges, so if by chance they left permanent marks, they would be hidden by the outlet covers.  If you don't want to test it on the wall, any dry erase board will work to test the markers. The dollar stores usually sell cheapo ones.  
2. Using a dry eraser does not remove the ink very well.  We remove our ink with rubbing alcohol in a mini sprayer. Be sure to keep it out of reach of small children. We just spritz the area we want to clean before using our dry erasers.  This leaves a lot of ink behind but the girls don't mind it for everyday use.  When I want to really clean it, I spray with alcohol and use an old cotton t-shirt to wipe it off.  This gets the ink off pretty good with not a lot of elbow grease.  
3. Ask the kids BEFORE you erase their artwork.  
4. Most of all, have some fun family time.  We like to play a game where one person starts a picture, then we take turns adding to it and guessing what the drawing will be. We have used it to do math problems, sight words, spelling, Tic Tac Toe, and the list goes on.   

Decorating my Coastal Bookcase

This was the fun part.  After my coastal bookcase makeover, I started working on filling it.  I had been using Pinterest to get ideas so I just went through and sifted through many pins.

First up was this amazing coastal wooden flag that I just HAD to make.   I still had some left over wood from when I disassembled 2 Adirondack ottomans.  Here is the where the wood came from.

I painted all the pieces first, lightly sanded the edges and parts of the front for a distressed look, then had the hubs cut the sides off where there were previous screw holes and attach them all together using 2 other scrap pieces of wood.  I'm really not sure why one of the boards didn't get paint on the back side, or even why I painted the back of any of them in the first place.  I blame it on painting at 2am!

I only needed 9 starfish, but I ordered a lot of 25 (1 inch) from North Florida Shells. Who can't use some extra little starfish around the house??  I stuck them on with super glue and there you have it! 

I need to get a larger easel to display it on though. It's a little wobbly.  I'll display this proudly for all the patriotic holidays.... or year round.  ;)

Next, I wanted to place books on it, but didn't like the mismatched nature of them. I saw that people had used maps to cover books with, so I found an old atlas I had collecting dust to cover the books.  I really liked the blues and greens in them.  I used mostly pages with places we have visited, and then a few other ones just because I liked the way the maps looked. 

The pictures, candle, coral and seashells were on the bookshelf prior to the makeover, so I just added them back on.  The letter was purchased from AC Moore some time ago, just didn't have a place to put it.  Now it has a home!

Decorating for Easter:

For Easter, I added some mini birdhouses that I purchased from Joann's last year from their dollar bin. I just gave them a few coats of white paint, then sanded the edges a bit. I found the bunny at a thrift store last year for .89.  The eggs are just those plastic Easter eggs wrapped in some twine using hot glue. 

I will add a few little accents for all the holidays!

China Cabinet Goes Coastal

I loved how the bookcase turned out so much I decided to give the china cabinet a similar makeover since new china cabinets are so expensive. My mom left the china cabinet here when she moved as it was way too large for her new home.  It is Asian-inspired so it was tricky turning it into something coastal. Here is what it looked like before.

First we scraped off the Asian pin striping on all the glass doors.  It came off really easily!

We took all the doors off and removed all the gold hardware.  Unfortunately, it left a ton of holes in the doors. 



I happened to have some dowel rods that fit perfectly in the large holes so we cut them to size and tapped them in.

We filled the rest in with putty and sanded them down.

Next, using the same wainscoting from the bookcase remodel, Hubs measured and cut them to fit into the door.

He used liquid nails to secure them and reinforced them with nails.  More holes to fill in with putty.  Yay. 

Primed the doors and cabinet with 2 coats of Zinsser's primer, then 2 coats of satin finish white.  

Taping the mirror was ridiculous!

Yes, I painted right in the dining room! These pieces were too heavy to move into the garage. 

After days of painting and sanding and painting, it was ready to be put back together again!

Almost complete!!  Just have to put the new hardware pulls on and fill it up!

Here is what it looks like today...

We absolutely love how it turned out!


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Country Bookcase Goes Coastal

The dining room is our next room overhaul.  Mom left her Asian-inspired dining room set and an old country style bookcase here when she moved since her new dining room was smaller.  The bookcase has been a good dumping ground for stuff that doesn't have a place because I could just close it up. 

I was getting tired of looking at it and was going to post it on Craigslist. Then I got to looking around on Pinterest, my new obsession place for ideas. I was inspired to transform this dated piece into something coastal.  It is laminate and wood and I wasn't sure about painting it so after some digging, I found a post by Centsational Girl on painting laminate furniture.  Well, that was that. I didn't like the hanging leaf trim at the top and I thought I could just unscrew it off but it was tacked and glued.

I took it off and asked Hubs if he could just cut it off.  Sure enough, that is what he did.



I liked the floral carving on the doors, but they weren't very beachy. 



I decided to buy some wainscoting to put over them.  Hubs cut 2 pieces out so that they fit right over the carved wood door.  We attached them with some brad nails and wood glue, filled in and sanded the nail holes, caulked around the edges and the wainscoting was ready to be primed and painted!



The door you see above the double doors used to be a pull down desk.  I had intended to put it back on but after taking it off to paint, I decided I liked it better without.  We had to fill in the hardware holes and sand it down. 

Rather than getting new hardware, I just primed and spray painted them with some Satin Nickel spray paint I had left over from another project.

I used 2 coats of Zinsser's primer, 2 coats of leftover paint from our kitchen/dining room for the back of the bookcase and 2 coats of leftover flat white ceiling paint for the rest of the bookcase, then followed it up with 2 coats of sealer. 







Here is what it looks like now. 

Quite the transformation, don't you think? 

         BEFORE                                 AFTER
 

See it decorated in the Decorating My Coastal Bookcase post.


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Switch Flops - Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Last year, I walked into a home and garden store and discovered Switch Flops.  If you haven't heard of these before, I insist you check them out!

WARNING:  You will want to buy these.  Many, many pairs of these.

It's basically a shoe with interchangeable straps or buttons.  Genius!  I started my new obsession around my birthday, so Hubs bought me 3 pairs (black Lulu, tan Lulu, and black Lily) with a few extra straps.  Then the store I got them from had a sale a few months later and I picked up the cork Emma and a few more straps. 

I'm not quite sure how I ended up with so many straps (ahem), but I got tired of sifting through them in a pile on my shoe shelf.   I decided I needed an organizer for them.  They sell them online, but I wanted something really pretty to display my collection.  I found a pattern for a wrapping paper organizer and modified it slightly to the size I needed and added strips of Velcro instead of pockets.  I think it turned out really well.  I have it hanging in my closet, but it also folds up easily for travel.

This is the front with a large pocket made out of coordinating scraps.

Here is the organizer opened up with some of my Switch Flop straps.

This is the back.

I love how it turned out!