Turning a Basement into a playroom: Part 1

Recently I have started converting our third bedroom/playroom into a “Big Girl” room for Jayne to make room for the babe coming in November. It was nice to have an actual playroom but truth is my kids hardly ever played in it unless other kids were over. I wanted to take a picture of at least one brilliant idea (in my mind) that I had for decorating it before I tore it all down. I had an empty wall with nothing to put on it and thought it would be fun to take an old book that I love and decorate the wall with its pages. It was a French/English alphabet book that I had found from the DI (like Salvation Army) and loved it because of the artwork and that my husband speaks French. I knew this would not be a toy room for very long with our growing family so I simply cut out the pages and taped them up! A super easy way to make the wall colorful and fun to look at. I’ll admit I was sad to take it down because this is the wall I am now working with:

Glamorous, right?

Here’s the thing: I am so thankful that I have a basement to send the kids to especially when we have family/friends over and the kids need a place to be kids. So I am going to show you the process of making this room a little more “kid friendly.” It may not be “pinterest worthy” but I am going to show you how I update this space for cheap!

Our first step is finishing off the walls that surround the furnace room. We do not have the money right now to dump into finishing the basement, but we did want to make it safe. We already had one accident of our DIY of hanging up the first two sheet rock boards on the wrong song. Whoops! (It is actually happening in this picture), but one day when we have professionals fix the space we will have them flip it around for us! The one wall that will be finished in the “play room” I will painting with chalkboard paint to create a fun art wall. I also found these adorable curtains that I am going to be using on the other two walls to give the room a more finished look. Originally I was going to go with white fabric and simply measure and cut for the entire room. But I found that for the cost and quality of the fabric it made more sense to spend $15 per pair of curtains from IKEA and have a fun pattern to look at as well. I think it will make the space more fun to be in and who doesn’t like birds?  I will update you as I go along. If any of you are having to make a toy room in the basement I hope my ideas will inspire you!

Find them Here

Next step is getting the door framed and then the fun begins with the chalkboard paint. This week I’ve been working on sewing a quilt for Jayne’s new big girl bed and I can’t wait to share it with you! Kind of dreading the fact that I have to take her out of her crib soon!