714. Design Weekend 4--The Toy Room

Welcome to Design Weekend!  We call this the "Toy Room" for obvious reasons.  Here is the finished product:

Toy Room

Now for the blank slate, the Before: 

Boring, but fixable!

Next, I will show you the inspiration photo: 

Magazine photo inspiration

My inspiration photo is obviously more about the color story, turquoise and lime green.  It is meant to evoke summertime, fun, the outdoors, the beach, tropical weather.   

Here is the floorplan of the room: 

Now I will fill you in on some details.  The room is in the attic space of our house.  It is a standard height ceiling though.  Here are some changes we made: 

• Installed air conditioning (in the entire house).  Therefore, the beadboard ledge or shelf on the far wall under the window houses the AC duct work for the ceiling of the rooms below (the two bedrooms). 
• We made the small closet on the left side of the floorplan bigger. 
• We removed the large closet to get more floor space. 
• We had a carpenter install deep shelves (right side) that actually go into the eaves of the house. 
• The paint is by Benjamin Moore (I should have a frequent buyer plan with them) and the turquoise is called "Tropicana Cabana."  I cannot remember the name of the lime color, but if you are dying to know, I can look it up later.  Mention in the comments if you want. 
• We chose to do all the trim work in the same colors (the turquoise and lime) so as not to draw your eye away and distract.  NO WHITE TRIM (except the door frame). 
• We wanted to add big windows, but Mr. Mastercard said absolutely not.  Mr. Cash said, "Why not give the illusion of a big window by taking the blinds all the way to the ceiling?"  This way, you just assume the window goes all the way up! 
• We added six recessed lights (and took down the one in the center of the room and ended up using it in the basement bathroom).  
• We installed wall-to-wall carpeting over the linoleum floor.       
• The vintage poster is from eBay. 
• The couch:  it is a couch from Ikea that we had to build from scratch in the space (because no normal size piece of furniture like a couch or even large squishy chair would fit up the narrow stairs).  The couch is actually white.  I had bought this fabric when we decided on colors, and I had a local fabric store give me the name of a seamstress that makes slipcovers.  I adore that fabric!  It is one of my favorite things in the room.   

Okay, time for more photos!  Here is a Before from the other side of the room (taking the photo standing by the window): 

There is that closet we got rid of.  The adjacent room is my study. 

And here is the After: 

Spacious, without that closet!

All right, let me tell you about this side of the room.

• That is a magnetic chalkboard paint on the left.  The kids can draw on that wall! 
• We got those cork squares from Home Depot and adhered them directly to the wall with rubber cement or glue or something and had the carpenter do a custom frame around the whole thing to look more like it is hung up than part of the wall.  Let me give you a close-up of that: 

The kids have a lot of artwork from school.  This is a nice spot to display some of it. 

Now for a close-up of some decor items in the room.  Here is that eBay vintage poster: 

We actually had this from our last house, and the colors ended up working for this room!

Okay, one more.  This is a neat watercolor my step-mom made for Short when he was born.  It is in the Toy Room, but in our last house it was in his nursery. 

She is a great artist!  This is watercolor. 

That is everything.  This room was a lot of fun to do, and a cheery place for the kids to play, especially if the weather outside is less than ideal.  You will notice we have NO television nor any kind of electronic games in here.  This was a conscious decision, as I wanted a spot that was for creativity and imagination play.    

One last look: 

 
Thanks for stopping by! 

MOV