Nursery to Playroom Makeover

I am so thrilled to say that our Playroom is now finished!  It is now officially my favorite room in the house.  Kind of like the nursery was before we had a baby and I would just sit in there and enjoy it...wait, y'all didn't do that?  That's not normal?  Well, then just forget I said that.  Anyhoo, I thought I'd share some pictures of the nursery before so you could see where we started.

In the past few weeks, we have been busy converting the nursery into a playroom.  You can read here about converting the closet into a dress up room.  We kept the paint color and window treatments because I loved the shades of green.  We also kept the rocker because we needed a cozy place to cuddle and read.

Here is the view of the room as I walk down the hall...  I just love seeing it!

One of the first projects I tackled was creating an art display wall. It was, of course, inspired by Pinterest posts and ended up being much more simple than I anticipated.  I'm sorry that I don't have pictures of the process, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  First, I went to a local thrift store and bought $18 worth of frames and framed art and then to Home Depot and bought 3 colors of spray paint.  I removed the glass and art and painted the frames.  Then Robbie and I mounted the frames on the wall with 3M mounting strips.  We put up a few wooden clothespins with more mounting strips and voila!  Instant art display!

We hit up IKEA for some of the furniture: the EXPEDIT shelving unit and one of their $9.99 end tables which we are using as a kids' table and two of their kids' chairs.  I found the pink and polka dot baskets at Target.

In the corner I wanted to create an "activity wall" so I mounted one of the painted frames from the thrift store and painted the wall behind it with chalkboard paint.  On the other wall I put up a magnet board that I found at Goodwill and painted to match the room.  Underneath the boards I hung some cute little buckets I found on the $1 aisle at Target to store chalk, eraser, etc.  So far, they are both a big hit!  (In case you're curious, on the magnet board I put some magnetic pattern blocks along with a pattern block mats printed from prekinders.com.)

For more storage (especially book storage) I used an old bookshelf from Robbie's college days.  It was looking a little scruffy, so I painted it with some extra trim paint we had.  The white looks nice and clean and ties in with the white little chairs.

The last little project I tackled was inspired by this art I saw on Etsy:

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I just loved it and was mistakenly fooled by Pinterest into thinking I could re-create it with a canvas, some letter stickers, and a little bit of paint.  Not exactly.  I did my best but it turns out that stickers don't really like to stick to canvas.  And when you add a little bit of paint, they move.  So, the girls and I did our best and with a white paint pen to touch up the lettering, I think it turned out...ummm...ok.  Not great, but definitely hand-made which is what I wanted for the playroom.

 

The girls already love the room and I love that many of our toys have moved back there!  It's the perfect place to read books with them, for Campbell to have some quiet time while Maggie naps, and for the girls to make memories! 

Oh, and I'm proud to say that this whole room makeover has been completely funded by selling a few baby items on Craigslist!  Yay for reusing items we already owned, finding cheap deals at thrift stores and IKEA, and making money by selling a few things we don't use any more!