de Jong Dream House: play room

Saturday, March 2, 2013

One Room. Three Views.

We're pretty excited about our latest project: making our flex room truly flexible. Here's a quick look:

Updated with Pinterest Friendly Collage:

3-in-1 Flex Room: Guest Suite, Play Room, and Room for Two | featured at Remodelaholic.com #flexroom #guestroom #playroom @Remodelaholic

And here's how it came together:

It's been just over one year since we moved in, and most rooms are reasonably "done." We do have plans to do room tours for each room in house, like we just did with D's bedroom, but several rooms still have a little tweaking to do, or I just need to find the time and energy to write the posts.

For quite awhile, our in-law suite has looked like this:

We used the bedding and decor from our old master bedroom.

Between the taller ceiling and greyish tint to our green walls, we knew we needed to make a few changes, but sometimes you just need a little motivation. Our motivation came in the form of a sick boy. In the battle of the flu v. the comforter set, the flu won.

Rest in peace, brown and green comforter set.

I found a green and gray comforter set on clearance, which was great, but it really pointed out how much we needed to change the artwork.

A little background: we put a master bedroom on the first floor for the convenience of our parents when they visit, and for our convenience when we get older and don't feel like climbing the stairs every day. When we have company come, they stay long enough that it's nice for them to have their own space, which the room offers with an en suite, private door to the back porch, walk-in closet, TV, private laundry, and separate heating/cooling zone.

Before we moved in, we figured we would mostly keep this room closed except when we had company. But my wise mom suggested we might want to use it as a play room. D is four, and although he plays independently, he loves having me nearby to show me all this creations. So the in-law suite has morphed into a playroom, with one problem.

We have a king size bed in the room, which is great for company, but not so great for little boys wanting to build train tracks. Then I remembered that the bed is a European king, which means it's essentially two twins. I also remembered that the Amsterdam print from Ikea would look better in here than Niels' office. And I found a place for the pretty bedsheet that I thought would make a cute curtain. (Tutorial on that to come).

Those sheets are my twin sheets from college. Two thoughts. One, I can't believe I still had them because, let's just say there's a big college reunion for me this summer. And two, twin sheets do not fit European kings.

One trip to Target later, we had nice stretchy sheets and new twin comforters on our new "sectional."

The print was too low when we hung it on the old nails, but we couldn't adjust the height until we made a decision about a headboard. We don't have a headboard in our room yet, but we wanted to get one for this room because we are in it...a lot.

We shopped our favorite haunts and found one on clearance at Wayside Furniture. It was just what we wanted for about a third of what we figured we'd have to spent. Love it when that happens.

We had a few days before the headboard was ready for pick up, so we made a temporary headboard out of tape so we could put up the print.

This worked out well.

Because we had a few days, I added tape tufting.

Then the flu struck again.

I took a shopping spree and found these cool lamps at TJ Maxx. They replaced the much too small and dark little lamp we had before, and inspired us to bring our coffee table (which pulls into two pieces) into the room.