This Christmas we decided we need to get rid of stuff instead of buying new stuff. So we decided as a family to clear out our storage room and turn it into a playroom. All seven of the kids and my husband all helped out. In fact, he actually did pretty much all of the traditional Christmas stuff that I'm always in charge of because I was too busy with the project. He is the best husband ever! We worked all week and even on Christmas eve to finish it. We also did some other building that day: we built healthier gingerbread houses with Graham crackers and cream cheese frosting and berries. They were delicious. I highly recommend using fruit over candy!
Anyway, I am so disappointed that I didn't think to take a before picture, but imagine a VERY full room filled with shelves stuffed full of storage and the small floor area that remains is taken up by a bed that barely fits in there so you have to crawl into it from the foot of the bed. That is what our storage room was. It was bad - really bad. Since the goal was to avoid buying stuff, we reused the lumber from the shelves to build more decorative toy storage and a playhouse. It turned out SO cute!
The playhouse opens up to the space under the stairs and we added a little "dog house" under the lowest part of the stairs for the animals pull-toys (but it is big enough for the kids to have fun playing inside there as well so I may add a light later on). Of course, the one stud bay we chose to add the door in had an electrical wire running through it, so we added 2 junctions on either side (one outlet inside the playhouse and a porchlight on the outside). We added a doorbell, that the kids love to push over and over (even though we haven't had time to build the door yet). We used plexiglass for the windows so they would be safer in the play area than glass. We had planned to paint the "siding" but it looked so good natural that we left it. I had already built the window boxes out of natural wood so they blend in but I might want to paint them later. They look better in real life than in the picture with their fake lambs ear and boxwood. And, because our area of the country doesn't readily sell cedar shingles, my husband suggested we use shims, which look really good too. He's so smart! And, we put in a foam flooring mats that look surprisingly good (like wood flooring) that we bought from WeSellMats. They look quite good and feel really good to walk on.
We ran out of time before completing the project so I will be adding pictures as we add more to the room. Like I mentioned, we still need to add a little dutch door to the playhouse. We also have a little mailbox to add to the playhouse, climbing wall hand-holds and plywood to add a climbing wall, gymnastic rings and a hammock chair to hang from the ceiling, and open shelving to hang above the toy shelves to display all our wooden toys. Down the road, we are planning to add a stage as well for all the costumes and puppets. But, apparently, projects go much slower when you are doing them with little kids than they do when you are alone. Imagine that! Haha!
UPDATE:
