Hurry! Quick! It's Clean!!

Mostly at least. Sans vaccuum marks in the deliciously new smelling carpet. Bummer. But as soon as I picked up the play room today I made the mad dash down for my camera before it became once again overrun by the mad little rulers that love to wreak toy havoc on their kingdom all day long. But none the less, I made it back up in time to snap a few quick "after" photos of probably THE room I was MOST excited about moving into this house. And it, go figure, was the first room "done". By choice and necessity I suppose.

Yes, the play room. We had a "play room" in our old house-- AKA our dining room. We have no dining room furniture so as many thought it was a great idea to set up our dining room as toy central. Well, it was great! While the kids were toddlers-- like lets say 2 and under-- we could "see them at all times" and they were "right there". Not so great when you have boisterous bigger kids that want to exert their big kid energy all kinds of up in your space! Some may think this makes me a bad mom, but by afternoon I was beyond ready to shoo those sweet yet playful children away for a while and not see or hear them until dinner was ready and let my frazzled little nerves have a break. Don't get me wrong!! I LOVE spending time with my kids but sometime I just needed them more than 10 feet away. I would think most moms, especially maybe the stay at home type (being with them every waking moment and all), would understand! We would encourage them to go play in their rooms and outside as much as we could, but they always, and I mean always want to be together.....SO, all that to say ;-)... the thought of them having an over the garage separate play space all of their own is soo very exciting to me!

Now why it had to be the 1st room done (other than for my sanity) was the 35 year old blue (turned brown in some areas, mm nice) shag carpet it was adorning. Slightly less than ideal for our extreme asthmatic child, not to mention "Get your blankies off the floor!!!" or  "Get up off on the carpet!!!" is no way to live in your own house. So we painted it all up and got new carpet the week after we moved in. It's pretty simple, but in my eyes, this room is stunningly beautiful ;-)! It is a breath of fresh air--- or maybe better put-- a huge gasp of quiet relief!

It's not completwly done. Still needs a new light fixture and some other finishing touches, but ah well...I'll take picked up for now, so... here is the only "before" I really have. I took this at our inspection while the previous owner's crap, for lack of better word, was still in there...

Ain't it lovely??? Actually, it wasn't too hard for me to see past all of the junk and know the potential that lied    underneath it all... deep...deep underneath ;-)

It was kind of ridiculous how quickly and easily I was able to fill up this, for us, massive room.

Good thing I held on to that rocker too, eh?

(you can see here there is a rear stair that goes down by the garage entrance and laundry room.)

I'm pretty proud of this. And there is a background story to it already ;-) There was this albatross of a piece of furniture left in this room that was heavy as all get out, took up way too much space, was useless and unattractive to us. The owners said they wouldn't remove it because it was a "fixture" of the house. In other words, they didn't want to have to deal with the behemoth. Before the carpet came Ryan took out all his aggression (since he has so much of it and all, ha, not!=) out on it and sawed, chopped, and kicked it to pieces. He even carved "I love Steph" into the top with the drill... aw puddin';-). It awaited its fate at the curb on trash day in our garage. Enter my mom. She worked magic on this thing!! The result you see is about 1/3 of what the original piece was. It was two of these with a desk in between. One side had drawers, the other doors. She sawed off the extra pieces, including the shards Ryan had left in his demo, she puttied, sanded, buffed, and even salvaged small pieces of wood trim from the other pieces to put on the side that was attached to more wood (where there was no trim and it would have looked really weird other wise). We painted and waxed over it and what you see above is the finished product. Not bad if I might say. I actually really love our re-purposed TV stand!

So there you have it! Our new playroom!

Yip-ee!!