Sweet November: Playroom Progress

We aren't making a nursery for this baby based on practicality. I don't want to sleep on a different floor than my nursing newborn, and I know the baby will end up being in our room for 6+ months... and since this is a rental, there's really no point in decorating an upstairs nursery that will never get used. Sort of a bummer since the house we were debating between getting when we rented this one had a seperate sitting room in the master bedroom that would have made a PERFECT nursery. Since I don't have a nursery to pour my nesting efforts into, I've been focusing on making our downstairs playroom more organized and baby friendly. The idea of a baby and a three year olds toys all being out around the house at the same time makes me start to panic a little. :)

The main goal I had for organizing our playroom was to make Jace more independant, keeping toys and crafts all in a set spot, so that if he wants to do something while I'm occupied with the baby he can just help himself. I also wanted to strive to keep baby toys and toddler toys seperate, to keep things safe for the baby... since several of Jace's favorite toys are technically "choking hazards" and I don't feel right taking them away from him for a year or two, or keeping them completely packed away. We've made a little progress in the playroom in the past couple of weeks. I blogged about a few of the updates we'd made to toy storage and craft storage a week or two ago, but more has been done since then... and hopefully if my nesting energy doesn't let up we'll be done with this space in a few weeks.

We needed more storage in the room, but most storage units are really expensive and I just couldn't justify continually buying more expensive stuff just for storing our stuff. Almost made me think instead we needed to donate some of our toys. UNTIL I came across a hideous little dresser at the thrift store. It was a small little four drawer dresser made of wood, and stained an ugly redish color. The reason it caught my eye was the size, it was the perfect width to fit in a little nitch in the wall in the playroom... and the price tag? $3.99. You can't even buy a plastic storage drawer for anywhere near that price! The dresser had a little bit of an "old" smell to it, Tate said it was just the cedar that I was smelling but my pregnancy nose was seriously grossed out... so before I did anything to the dresser I laid it outside on the driveway all taken apart to get some sun. (Sunning helps get odors out). I also scrubbed out the drawers with a little lemon cleaner, and put little cups of baking soda in each drawer to absorb some of that smell. I was, of course, impatient to get started on the "fun" part so I didn't let nature work it's course for as long as I probably should of, but was satisfied that the smell was mostly gone.

The dresser all taken apart, mid-cleaning

I did a light hand-sand on the entire dresser and drawer fronts to take off any shine and make the surface nice and pourous. Then I got to painting. I picked out Glidden no-VOC paint from Walmart that was both paint and primer in one. The color was "Caribbean Blue". It was important to me to use no-VOC paint since 1) I'm pregnant and 2) it's being used in a kids room. For extra safety I also used a mask and painted outside in open air... even though it was about 100 degrees that day and my neighbor may have stopped by to introduce herself mid-painting... let's just say I don't think she was very impressed with my way too small painting outfit (picture a pregnancy belly shirt and yoga pants) and full body sweating. I haven't seen her since ;)

As for my painting method... I'm lazy so I spread the paint on with a large roller on just one side or drawer at a time and immediately (while the paint was still wet) used a foam brush to smooth it to get rid of the bubbles that a roller leaves. I could have used a paint brush, but I like how thin and even a roller gets the paint on there and the foam brush worked perfectly to smooth the surface. I let each coat dry about 20-30 minutes in between, which was plenty because it was so blaze hot outside, and painted three coats total. Then moved into the garage to let fully dry for several hours before putting back together. I then re-attached the vintage glass knobs, and stenciled on numbers just for fun. I also put in drawer liners because... well it's pre-owned and I'd rather it be lined. :)

The picture above is a poor picture taken late at night on instagram, and doesn't demonstrate the correct color or size at all, a better picture is below at the bottom of this post. Jace loves the dresser storage, and I love that this is the perfect solution to keeping "choking hazards" tucked away out of baby's reach. It's also great for puzzle, game, and coloring book storage. The paint cost about $13, but I didn't even use the full quart on this project and used the paint again on another project since... and still have some left to spare. So technically this project cost almost $17, but with lots of leftover great quality no-VOC paint. (The stencils and acrylic white paint were already owned, purchased from Michael's for about $5 total)

After the dresser was complete I decided to tackle some of our book storage issues. Jace has a huge library of books that we've collected from thrift stores over time, which is great... but we are running out of room to put them. I wanted him to have some sort of easy access front facing bookshelves that would encourage him to help himself to a book, and know exactly which book he was grabbing. Because looking at the spine of books on a traditional bookshelf just doesn't work quite the same for 2 year olds! I had originally planned to use Ikea spice racks for front facing shelves, but Ikea is three hours away and last time I was there they were sold out (yes, out of spice racks...) so I needed a new solution. I had seen the idea of using rain gutters as bookshelves on pinterest months ago but thought it seemed like a headache. Since my spice rack idea fell through I decided to look into rain gutters. I went to Lowe's where they sell 10 foot vinyl rain gutters for about $5. I found one that had a slight imperfection and the guy said he'd sell it to me for a dollar instead if I wanted it. I had him cut it into two pieces so that it would fit in my car (love their customer service!) and also grabbed a couple end cap brackets (about $2-3 each). The guy helping me was seriously confused on what I was trying to accomplish with this project. :)

Once I was home I figured out exactly how wide I wanted my shelves and used my power saw to cut two pieces at 28". I sanded down the sides after sawing, to make sure there wasn't anything even remotely sharp on the gutters. I secured the end cap brackets into the wall using long screws (along with drywall anchors for security!) and then snapped the shelves into place. They are very secure without any other screws, brackets or nails... although if I were making longer ones I would have added more support. To ensure they were perfectly straight I measured from the ground up and left little pencil marks where my screw holes would be, then I held the shelves up to the marks with a level inside and made sure they were pefectly straight. Then, the fun part, books! Jace loves that he has some of his favorite books right at his height on the wall for him to easily grab out and sneak a peek at. The project total for these shelves was $13, the most expensive part being the end caps.

Those were the bigger projects I accomplished this week, but I did a couple other fun little projects too. I used the leftover dresser paint, along with some wooden letters (from the craft section of Walmart for $2) and some wooden blocks (from the crown moulding section of the hardware store, about $2 each) to make some book ends. I used super glue to attach the letters to the blocks and then painted them. The blocks I purchased were pre-primed and felt heavier than the plain wood ones, so I grabbed those for more support. They hold up board books really well, but I think if I was to use taller flimsier books I would need to add more weight to the bottom of the blocks or add non-slip bottoms. I really like the way they turned out though... this project cost about $8-10 total.

I also made a couple projects with twine. For the first project I used an old frame, painted it with glossy acrylic paint, and then used my staple gun to secure twine to the back in a random pattern. This literally took about 3 minutes to do, and I didn't follow a pattern. Then I secured a little sawtooth bracket to the back and hung it up on the wall. I used mini-clothes pins to secure some of Jace's flash cards on it to display the letter, number and animal we're focusing on that week. This would have been a great "memo board" if the frame were bigger but I figured this would be a good way for my pregnancy brain to remember what we're supposed to be learning that week. ;)

Since I had a ton of twine laying around after that project (the rolls are HUGE and run about $5 or less) I decided to make some "clotheslines" to display some of Jace's favorite artwork. I feel bad throwing away any of his crafts, especially because he enjoys seeing them well after the fact of actually making them, but keeping them sitting around in piles didn't make that much sense. I just took some small eye screws and measured four even heights and screwed them into the wall. Then I tied twine in between to form two semi-loose clotheslines. Then I used clothespins to hang some of Jace's artwork. Jace immediately got excited when he saw his art hanging up, so I was glad I decided to go that route instead of something else that I may have thought looked a little more "put together". This project was free since I already had plenty of twine and eye hooks around. If you're looking for eye screws they run about $1 a multipack.

While I was at Lowe's I also picked up some empty paint buckets for a couple dollars each. I was planning to cover them with scrap book paper and use as craft storage on Jace's playroom table, but decided to try the steel look first and super glued some $1 letters onto them spelling "ART". They looked fine at first, but the fingerprints are reminding me alot of my fridge (ha!) so I'm going to end up covering them with scrapbook paper afterall and I may paint the letters too. I plan to fill one of them with colored pencils (instead of playdoh) so that Jace can color at any time... I'm also planning to hang a file folder on the wall right there holding a couple of coloring pads. The pipecleaners are great because Jace likes to make shapes and letters with them, and the window markers in the third bucket are a must because Jace likes to grab them out and color on the playroom window whenever the mood strikes.

Making letters with pipecleaners

Coloring on the windows.

I also made a little project for the baby last weekend. Since it's a toy I guess it can be considered "playroom progress" right? I made a little felt cube for the baby. I cut 6 even squares of different colored felt, and then proceded to cut out and handstitch 6 different things to each side. I used different colored "friendship bracelet" thread to stitch the pieces to the felt, and used a mix of stitch types depending on the look I was going for. I stitched a mushroom, ladybug, hedgehog, cupcake, apple, and duck. Then I used a blanket stitch to sew all the sides together. I filled the cube with poly-fil before securing the last side. It doesn't photograph that well because most of it's charm is in the little stitches that you can only really see up close and in person... but it was a fun project, and this is coming from a very anti-sewing person. :)

First cube down...

All done :)

I have been avoiding the remaining projects I have on my to-do list for this room because they're much harder and more scary sounding projects. I'm planning to make some striped lime green and white curtain panels and a big oversized floor "pouf" for Jace's reading nook in the corner. My sewing machine is beyond repair at this point, so I'm going to have to buy a new one before I tackle to floor pouf, although I already have the fabric staring at me telling me to hurry up and get it done. It includes piping and a handle... so that may or may not be a very stupid starter project for this beginning seamstress! I also plan to sew some toy buckets, make some rustic storage crates, fix the drawer on the train table, build some under train table rolling storage boxes for train tracks and car tracks, decorate a coloring book file holder, get more sturdy and stylish chairs for the craft table, add more to Jace's felt board, hang some globes from the ceiling, and about a million other things. The only motivation I have at this point is that the improvements I've made so far to the room have made it 100% more usable for Jace. He plays independantly in there, does puzzles and crafts whenever he wants, reads books all the time, eats snacks in there, and is learning how to stay organized and tidy too.