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Our Playroom Reveal: Black and White and Toys all Over!

When I type “reveal” I feel like we’re on an HGTV show and I just finished rushing around putting the final elements in place before I show you a big room makeover.  But, after last week’s “Playroom Inspiration” post, several of you demanded to see OUR playroom, so that’s pretty much what I did.

Playroom design

I mean, this room did NOT look like this before.  And it did take a lot of frantic finishing-up-projects to get it to this point. And cleaning. That, too.

It’s true, this toyroom is completely staged for photos on this blog.  It’s never been this clean before and will never be this clean again.  And (full disclosure) we have a couple more big totes (okay, fine, there’s 6 of them) full of toys that I shoved around the room, just out of view of the camera, as I took these pictures. So, if you’re looking at this and wondering where all the toys are, that’s where. (And in those dresser drawers, which is a super genius idea I had, if you ask me.)

Now, on with the tour:

This is what you see when you walk into the room from the living room.  The dressers were hand-me-downs from my husband’s family.  We painted them in college and have used them randomly since then.

playroom ideas

They work GREAT for holding toys!

store toys in dresser

On top of this dresser is a black shoe rack from the Goodwill. It does a great job holding games and puzzles. 

unique toy storage

To the right, along the east wall, is a vintage school table.  My friend, Jent, brought it all the way from Indiana for me to sell at The HomeShed.  But I snapped it up for my house, instead.

play table

The table has so much wear and tear character, I don’t mind if the boys mark it up a little while working on art projects.

vintage school table

Speaking of art projects, we keep the art supplies close at hand on the back of the door that leads to the living room.  This clear shoe organizer is a perfect for organizing kids’ art supplies!

art supply organization

The 6 Cube Organizer stores more games, construction paper and coloring books.

art organizer

Two of the chairs at the kids’ table are extras from our dining set.  I bought 8 of these antique oak chairs for $10 each and spray painted the vinyl seats over a year ago. I love the way that black chairs look with the table, but it seems silly not to use these extra dining chairs, which we pull out when we have visitors, anyway.

Plus, the oak matches the 100 year old trim, doors and floor pretty well.

vintage table antique chairs

On the opposite side of the room, we have three long shelves.

  playroom

I ordered 12 of these shelf brackets from Amazon and hung the shelves this summer.  I didn’t bother finding the studs, and one night, the shelves all came tumbling down.  We had some heavy stuff stored on the top shelf and it fell first, knocking the next two shelves to the floor after it.  All of the games and puzzles on the shelves spilled, mixing their pieces together.  I decided sorting them wasn’t worth the time, and that led to a big toy purge.

2014-08-07 06_25_58

Then, I ordered 6 more brackets , found the studs, and put the shelves back up.  I’m fairly confident they’re not going anywhere this time.

playroom shelves

Continuing around the room, there is an armoire that came with the house.  It fits perfectly, so it stays.  (And holds dress clothes and coats that don’t fit in our regular closet.)

IMG_1449

One last thing – the light fixture in the ceiling is mysteriously broken, so I used some pendant light kits from Target (no longer there, but this one is similar) and antique barn light shades to create these pendant lights in front of the windows.

antique barn light

So there you go – for those of you who demanded to see my toyroom after last week’s “Playroom Inspiration” post, here it is!


By the way, here are a few more ideas for kids rooms:
IMG_6552-3157rev-1_thumb7Crib Spring Bulletin Board img_0634_thumb65


Stuffed Animal Zoo
bookshelf-dresser6Bookshelf Dresser
img_1104_thumb24Wooden Puzzle Storage img_5571_thumb14Pretty Diaper Boxes