After last Christmas, the daughter of a friend of ours, who is the same age as Pippa, almost died and is now permanently disfigured. She was just playing in her playroom. I won't go into specifics, as it's not my story to tell, but I did some research and it ended with me going through every toy we owned and throwing out all of the plastic junk. Which left our playroom pretty bare. We had empty shelves and many books but really, no toys. So I made a new rule that goes something like No Plastic Crap That Annoys The Hell Out Of Me. That's what I told my husband and friends. To the kids this meant Nothing Fun That You Can Get At Target.
We live in an apartment, and technically the playroom is a den, and when we moved in we basically took every single toy we had and threw it in the playroom. We never decorated. But then Nick had to do some work at home once in awhile, and guests had to sleep in the kids room on bunk beds or on a blow up bed, and the kids had to sleep on the trundle bed we bought and put in our room, and it was just a mess. So when we emptied the room of all the toys and broken, or really (lovingly) ruined things, we were left with books and a select few stuffed animals. A clean slate.
The floor was generic apartment carpet, beige and scratchy to little knees and elbows (and faces) and irritating to touch and see. So we tore it out. We weren't sure whether we wanted to put in hardwood (prettier, increases value of apartment, we like it more) or better carpet (also pretty, and won't get scratched or dented like hardwood, can wipe up spills), so we waited awhile to decide on that, but we eventually went with a a dark brown hardwood that seems to be pretty kid-proof. We painted the walls white (from their previous red that came with the apartment) but then we decided to just go for it and we ended up painting the walls a rather light but still bright blue.
A relative of Nick's built us a huge built-in-but-if-we-really-wanted-to-we-could-take-it-elsewhere wallbed/table/storage system. Whew, mouthful. It is white and has three sections, and it stands opposite the door and takes up the entire wall, so when you walk into the room the opposite wall is one huge built-in system.
On one end it opens 90 degrees to reveal a desk for Nick to work from, complete with a huge markerboard for ideas (shhh, don't tell the kids they can draw on it!) and a printer, and a laptop place, and a lamp, and a place for all our papers that we need to have, being adults and all. We discovered that even though it was built for Nick, I can use it too. So it's usually mine, I pay the bills and do all our paperwork there, until Nick brings his work home. Then I go sit on the couch.
In the middle, well, there's a bed. You push a button and pull a handle and a bed folds out of the wall. We decided to go crazy and make it a california king, because sometimes our guests co-sleep with their kids, and we wanted to make it roomy. When the bed is folded up there are two choices of disguise. One is a panel with a design on it to match the rest of the cabinets. That panel usually sits in between the mattress and the bottom of the bed, because we only use it when we have company over. The other option is a neat idea Nick had while we were waiting for the panel to be finished. Nick put drywall over the panel of wood under the bed, the one that is facing the room when the bed is folded up. He painted it with chalkboard paint from floor to ceiling and now the kids can draw all over it and up top I can write rules and little messages. The "good panel" that matched the cabinets, snaps and locks into the frame of the "chalkboard". We had a little dilemma between going with chalkboard paint (dust, crumbles, possible eating by little ones) vs. dry erase paint (no dust, no crumbles, but the kids could eat those markers too, and those markers could be used to draw on other surfaces) but after much weighing of pros and cons we went with chalk because it won't colour other surfaces.
The third part is 9 shelves. The five shelves on the bottom are full of books for the kids to read, the fifth one up holds cute metal boxes of art supplies like paint things and scissors, things the kids only use when I'm in the room. The seventh and eighth shelves each hold two kids photos and two keepsake chests of little things I want them to have when they're older. The top shelf is for baby/kid books. Because I was crazy about the kids baby books and it carried on until they turned 5.
So that's how the playroom is right now. We aren't going to do anything about it over the holidays, and we're hoping to have the finishing touches on it by Valentines Day.
