Children's Reading Area

old family room and toy closet/play area

Prior to the spring of 2009, I had a very teeny tiny family room to go along with the teeny tiny bedrooms for my children. At a loss for what to do for extra space for my children's toys, I ended up turning a little used closet under the stairs into a toy closet for them.

old family room and toy closet/play area

They loved the space and it was a wonderful way to expand their play area without the expense of building onto our home. Fortunately in the spring of 2009 we were able to bump out the back wall of our family room and kitchen area. We added approximately 270 square feet to our house. Not only did this give us a larger family room, but it also enabled us to seat our entire family of four (plus a couple of guests!) at our kitchen table. This gave me the chance to move all of the toys OUT of the family room and into the room that had been the dining room. Moving the toys in addition to building the addition really made the first floor of our house feel bigger! (We're still stuck with teeny tiny bedrooms though...but at least they don't have many toys in them!)

After moving all of the toys, the toy closet ended up unused for over a year. Actually, it ended up being the place where I shoved all the stuff I needed to donate to charity. Finally I decided to reclaim it as a reading area for my children.
The little pink chair in the doorway is one I found in my old room at my mom's house. I think she bought it at Ikea fifteen years ago! I tossed a pillow on the floor as well as my children's Pillow Pets. (As an aside, I love having a "home" for these Pillow Pets! I'm big on toys having homes.)
I put Golden Books in a basket on the floor and put picture books in the book sling shelf along the back of the closet. The only item I bought for this reading area is the book sling I purchased from Amazon (it is by KidKraft and I paid around $50) but there are different versions at multiple retailers. Just like the rain gutter book shelves I put up in my son's room, I think it is great to have bookshelves that allow children to see book covers.
My children were so excited when I showed them their new reading area! They call it "The Book Nook" and love reading in there. It is a cozy space that they can make as snug as they wish. I love providing different areas for my children to read and this one definitely is proving to be a favorite of theirs.

Linking to Sanctuary Arts at Home's Refresh Your Room

Rain Gutter Book Shelves

books on the floor...not very pretty or practical!

On Thursday I posted pictures of the twin trundle bed we built for our little boy using plans from Knock Off Wood and in those pictures you could see some new additions to Handsome's wall.

You see, once we added the bed to his room and took out the crib, his already small room seemed to get even smaller than before (I didn't think that was possible!) and his little bookcase no longer fit in his room. This meant his books were on the floor and this was driving me crazy!

My husband really wanted to build some nice wood bookshelves but his project list is very very long and I pretty much was DONE with the books being on the floor. So I convinced my very reluctant husband that putting raingutters inside our house was a good idea. He read the tutorial from Raising Olives and then went to Home Depot for supplies. A few hours later we had two bookshelves on Handsome's walls and no more books on the floor!

Ahh, so much better! There even is room for us to put in some nice wide trimwork instead of that flimsy builder-grade stuff...when we finally get around to that project. Better yet, I don't have to move piles of books when I vacuum!

Doesn't the shelf next to his bed look cute? Having the covers facing out is so practical and I love the length of the shelf--it lets me display lots of books for him to peruse.
This is what my babies started doing about fifteen seconds after they saw the new bookshelves!

I linked to Inspiration Friday!

Master Bedroom Closet Update

Our master bedroom closet was a disaster. I'm not exaggerating, either. The wire shelving was pulling out of the walls (or, in the case of one shelf, fell out five+ years ago), the closet had never been painted since the house was built in the mid 90s, and we had stuff EVERYWHERE. You see, we have a decent size house but we lack decent storage--no basement and very very limited attic space (basically enough room for our Christmas decorations.) Because of this, I tend to stuff everything I can into our closet.

It was bad--are you ready?

This is looking to the right after you go into the closet. I was gathering up stuff for a consignment sale, so I have even more bags and tubs of stuff than usual stuffed in here. The shelf with all the white hangers was falling out of the wall on the left side, so I could only put clothes on one side of the shelf. There used to be another shelf in here, but it fell down shortly after we moved into this house and we never fixed it because we knew we were going to redo the closet...we just didn't realize how long it would take us to get around to doing it!
See, here is that same side of the closet all emptied out of stuff. Not pretty! You can see where the anchors are for the shelf that fell down as well as the holes for the shelf that is halfway to falling down.

Last year we were at Costco and saw a beautiful wood closet system there--I think it was about $300 or so. At any rate, it was a great price for a quality system, so we bought it. We put it in the garage and left it there. For a year. Ooops. Finally enough was enough and I decided that we were going to do our closet and get it done with. And by "we" I mean my husband. I helped empty the closet and find stuff to donate and then I put everything back in the closet afterward, but he did the building and painting.
Ahhh, so much better! Compare that to the first picture on this post--what a difference! The closet system is SO sturdy and looks so nice! It is the John Louis Home Premier System in Red Mahoghany. I love it! You can configure it in all sorts of ways and all those shelves in the middle are adjustable. Gorgeous. I don't think Costco sells it anymore, but I did find it on Amazon. Unfortunately the Amazon price is at least $100 more than what we paid--but it still is worth it.
Love it!! It installed pretty well, too, according to my husband, and it is SO sturdy the way he installed it. We did have a couple of pieces (a camlock and a closet bar support) break while he was installing it. I called the customer service number and the telephone was answered by a real person (that shocked me!) who was so nice and polite. She shipped out the problem parts without any hesitation and we received them within just three days--and we do not live anywhere remotely near their corporate offices. Absolutely amazing customer service.
Remember that wall with the falling down shelves on the right side of my closet? Here it is now. No more shelves! We took everything out of the closet, filled in the holes from the old system, ripped off the baseboards (they're still MIA--we're slowly upgrading all the trim in the house to white millwork) and painted the whole closet white.)
I still have a lot of totes in here, but it isn't overwhelming any more...mostly because all the consignment sale stuff now is downstairs in what used to be the toy closet...the sale is next month and I'm looking forward to getting rid of this stuff!
Ahhh!
This is the left side of the closet. Love all this space. We can actually walk into our walk-in closet again! I'm thinking about moving a dresser into here to open up space in our bedroom. And yes, I know the "red mahogany" color doesn't match the oak of the doorframe, but remember, we're (eventually!) changing everything to white--including the trim and doors.
The bars are metal and the hangers can slide along the full length. I still have more organization and decorating to do in here. I want to get big flat boxes to put on the tippy top shelf and use those to collect gifts for my children. That will eliminate a few of the totes I have stored in here.

Definitely more projects to come in here--but for now we are so happy to have a closet that doesn't make us cringe every time we open it!

Knock, Knock!

After February being such a crazy month with emotional highs and lows, I needed to take a hiatus from my blog...but I'm back now.

In addition to my grandma's death and Handsome's testing, we also refinanced our mortgage down to a fifteen year loan (ack!!) and moved forward with our addition to our house--we're going to be breaking ground in about 1.5 weeks. Yes, February was a crazy month and was more than a bit too much for me to handle.

So, how do I handle crazy amounts of stress? I clean...I clean little areas that nobody ever looks in and that really are kind of a waste of time to clean...so I clean them and then get annoyed that nobody ever notices. Luckily the area that I decided to clean this time around needed some extra attention, so people did notice my hard work...and my family is reaping the benefits of this cleaning spree.

When we painted our downstairs, we never got around to painting our teeny tiny coat closet. In fact, the coat closet kind of became a black hole. Yes, there were coats in it, but there also was a pile of stuff for Goodwill, my camera equipment, miscellaneous packages of bubble wrap, and all sorts of other junk! The children's coats weren't even in the coat closet because they couldn't reach to hang them up.
Did I mention that this is an awkward little closet? Awkward to use and awkward to photograph! Here is another picture with the door removed before I emptied the closet and painted it.
Yes, lots of STUFF in there--including some pretty frames I forgot I bought to hang up in the dining room! Whoops!

I emptied the closet out and used leftover paint to finally give the closet a fresh coat of paint--the first it has had since the house was built 13 years ago! We're the third owners of this house and the first to paint the downstairs at all...so those closet walls sucked up the paint like a dry sponge!
Next I sorted out all the stuff that *was* in the closet and repurposed two bins (from Target) that had been storing puzzles...now their new home is the top shelf of the closet...and they really helped organize the chaos! I had my husband hang up a row of hooks (less than $10 from Target) for the children to hang their coats and I put an extra shoe rack (a castoff from a friend at college about 13 years ago!) in the bottom of the closet to hold our snowboots.
It looks SO much better now...and there still is room for my husband to put his gigantic workbag (backpack/laptop case) as well as for our American flag to tuck into the corner.
I think my favorite thing is this row of hooks. Prior to this the children had their coats hanging from a wall shelf in our entryway and it was getting out of control. Now they're tucked in the coat closet and the children can hang them up themselves!

It's a tiny space (the hanging space isn't even two feet wide) but now it is organized and our entryway looks better too because there no longer are small jackets flung all over the place!

From Awkward Coat Closet to Fun Toy Closet!

In our small family room, we have an awkward coat closet that angles back under the stairs. Up until two years ago, we just had it stuffed with random items and then had the children's train table pushed up against the door so they would stay out of the closet. It made the closet rather useless and the train table difficult to use.

So, two years ago I decided to make it over as a surprise for my little ones! I don't have a really good before picture with all the junk in there, but here is mostly what it looked like--dingy paint, a light fixture with a pull string, a metal wall box with our house alarm mechanics, and a single wire shelf running across the back of the closet. Not very pretty!!
My husband's contribution to this project was to convert the pull-string light to a regular light fixture with a wall switch. At the end of the project he removed the door from the closet and sanded down the hinge plates so there wouldn't be any rough edges for the children to hurt themselves. We kept the door on the closet until I was done with the makeover because this was a big surprise for my children.

I wanted to make it a light and bright space for my children, so I painted the entire closet blue and painted the trim white. Next I painted puffy white clouds using a sea sponge. Then I stenciled on flowers and little bugs in bright colors.
I wasn't sure how to cover up that metal box, so I used my staple gun and put up a piece of fabric. Then I put a toy shelf in front of the fabric so that little hands wouldn't pull the fabric off the wall. Another problem was the access panel in the floor that is used to get to the crawl space under the house. I covered up that area with a small area rug--I didn't want the children picking at the carpet edges on the panel access area.
After that, I hung some small butterflies from clear thread in the ceiling (of course I don't have a picture of that!) and I was done.

My children LOVED the space and used to spend lots of time playing in the closet. It was a great way to add more space to our family room. Now that it has been two years, they don't really play in there any more...so this summer I think I'll be changing it to a book nook for them. I'll change out the toy rack for a bookshelf and give them some comfy pillows to lounge on. I just want to wait until after we do our small construction project this spring.

For more fun ideas, visit The Lazy Organizer for more Talk about Tuesday posts!

Taming Kids' Clutter

Wendy at The Shabby Nest is having a "Taming Kids' Clutter" link party! My little ones have LOTS of stuff, so I am loving this!!

I've posted before about my wall of cubbies in the family room. It is fantastic storage for my children's toys and works really well for our family. My children love having a place for everything and it makes cleanup very easy for them. Actually, that post from last summer gets a lot of hits from Google -- I think there are a lot of parents out there who are looking for toy storage ideas!
This is the picture from last summer--things have been rearranged a bit, but the general idea is the same. I bought those cubbies at Target from the closet organization area, but I know Ikea has something similar. I've even seen it done where people arrange them like built-ins around a window and do a long storage unit under the window and then turn two units on end and put them on either side of the window. My storage units are "wood" colored, but they also come in white.
A couple of years ago I turned an awkward closet under the stairs (also off our family room--to the right of the toy storage) into a toy closet for my children. I painted it with clouds and flowers, bugs, and butterflies and made it into a little haven for my children. In the back of the closet there is more toy storage--one of those racks with bins on it that I think so many of us have. My children really do like having a place to put each and every toy and both children do a great job of doing their own cleanup.
This dresser (which I'm using as a sofa table) is right off the eating area in my *small* kitchen/family room area. Yes, this is the garage sale dresser that I rehabbed. The drawers are full of art supplies for my children. I had hoped they would be able to access the supplies by themselves, but the drawers are too heavy and don't have drawer stops--still, it is very easy for me to pull out what they need and put it on the kitchen table for them to use.
The top drawer houses my Handwriting Without Tears stuff, current worksheets my 5 year old is doing (she loves them, crazy girl!), art kits, and miscellaneous art supplies.
The middle drawer is the most used and has paper, coloring books, lots of crayons (in the basket), paints, and workbooks that we haven't used yet.
The bottom drawer is half-filled with playdough supplies, stickers, Aquadoodle stuff, Perler beads, and the BIG coloring pages.

I love being able to hide away all this "clutter" and yet still have these supplies readily accessible.

Family Room Toy Storage

The other day when I posted pictures of my daughter's bedroom, I mentioned that most toys are kept downstairs in the family room. I thought today I'd share pictures of some of our family room toy storage.

My biggest area for toy storage is this wall of cubbies. These are two sets of cubbies from Target--I think they're meant for closet storage. Anyhow, I put these up in early January and they have made my life so much easier! I feel like we have a lot of toys, probably because Handsome still likes a lot of babyish toys whereas Princess is into toys for preschoolers. And of course we have our ever-growing collection of books. We have books everywhere in this house!
You can see that five of the cubbies are taken up by books. The last spot on the top row has two different wooden trains. On the second row we have: doctors kits and tool kit, toy phones and princess mirrors, wooden puzzles, bin with "My Friend" doll clothes (my old doll clothes!), two toy firetrucks; toy trucks and truck flashlight. In the third row we have: box with Snap n Style dolls/clothes (with library books stored on top of the box), toy bus and construction vehicle, bin with Leappad books, bin with baby toys, bin with blankies, and a toy airplane.

The Leappad is stored in the gap between the armoire (which houses the television and electronics), and large Little People toys are stored on top of the cubbies. Lincoln Logs are in the big container to the right with a bead maze and firehats stored on top of the container.
Here are the family pictures I have displayed on shelves above the toy storage. These are the only color pictures I have displayed in the house. I just recently put the vinyl lettering up and I love it--except I put it up a couple of inches too low!! Ugh! I know I *could* rearrange the frames, but I like this arrangement. So I'm living with this for now until I decide just how much it all bothers me.

Oh and the wall shelves? They were free--well, either that or the world's most expensive shelves...I guess it depends on your perspective. The previous home owners left them behind and I stashed them in a closet for a couple of years before repainting them and rehanging them. Or another view on the shelves is that they cost us a plumbing project. See, when the previous home owners put those shelves up, they put a screw right through a PVC water pipe in the wall--a mistake that nobody knew about until awhile AFTER we took the shelves down--when I felt the carpet near the wall and realized it was soaked!! Luckily the wall backs onto the garage, so my handy husband cut a huge hole in the wall, cut out and replaced the section of pipe, and I bleached the entire cavity to kill off any mold that was growing. Apparently removing that screw was equivalent to removing a plug and thus water sprayed out of the hole when we ran water in the upstairs bathrooms.

Okay, back to toy storage! To the right of those cubbies is a little coat closet tucked under the stairs. We didn't use it (except for stuffing it with unused stuff!) for a couple of years and then jamming the train table in front of it to keep Princess from exploring the junk we had stuffed in there. Then 1.5 years ago I had the idea to use that space for playing!
We took the door off (another one of those icky oak hollow-core doors...thus the oak trim around the door frame) and my husband removed the pullstring light fixture and did the electrical work necessary to put in a regular light with a lightswitch. I painted the closet up and added in a toy shelf and a rug (to hide the access panel in the floor that leads to our crawl space) and then we revealed it to the children--they had no clue (well, Handsome was a baby then!) what we had been working on.
Princess was so excited and for quite awhile they spent a lot of time playing in there. Lately they haven't spent as much time in the closet playing, so I'm thinking of turning it into a reading nook and moving all of the downstairs books in there and putting some big floor pillows in there. I'm still pondering that though. I think once they outgrow the toy closet completely, I'll turn it into my little office and put a little desk in there for me.

Maybe next week I'll post the before/after pictures of the toy closet. It was a dreary unused space before and now it is so bright and cheerful! You can't see the toy closet at all until you're all the way in our (fairly small) family room, so it is a great surprise for children who come over to play.

We do have more toys, but this is all the pictures I have for now.