With baby Julien joining our family this earlier this summer, it was time for a change – we needed that upstairs bedroom that girls used to share, for a nursery. And so there was no other option then to turn the downstairs playroom/ occasional guest room in to an all in one girls shared bedroom!
However, the biggest challenge was the tight space and the absence of build in closet! Not to mention the amount of toys that it had to fit in (since our basement is still in construction , there’s no other playroom for now!).
But, I knew that with a bit of an effort, this could be a perfect European style, sleep-and play room for my girls!
Here’s how this space used to look only two weeks ago:
And here’s how it looks now:
And here are the changes I made:
- I sold all of their bedroom furniture, and some playroom once too, and with that money I got new. No, not because I like shopping that much, but simply because instead of trying to fit in too big furniture in a tight space, I decided to go for the most ergonomic solution possible.
- And that leads us to bunk beds! A piece of furniture I never thought I’d get, as I used to think they are too bulky and heavy for our small space. But it was really the only solution, and in the end I love it here! And that leads us to..
- All white furniture! This is not a surprise, since I have a lot of white furniture in our home – that’s because, again, our space is small, and with white furniture and colorful accents it feels bigger!
- A low six drawer dresser instead of a high one that we had – that as you might notice has not much going on on top of it- that’s because in reality it serves as a space to play with playmobil and figurines – my girls favourite play! Plus, I found these zebras knobs that has instantly added character to the simple dresser.
- New reading nook. We have a big collection of kids books, that didn’t fit in this room, so why I decided to re-use the long thin shelves that used to be hanging above their beds in their old bedroom, for the “Books of the month” display. That way every month we’ll be switching the books that we read before bed time, and they’ll actually get to see better what we have ( in stead of reading over and over the same onse!) . And I think this will encourage them even more to sit ( on that adorable donut pillow) and read alone!
- Baskets for larger stiffies and dolls – my girls are nowhere close of getting rid of their stuffies collection (that used to just hang out on the guest sofa in here before- aka being a huge mess) Now, with colorful baskets it looks so much more cleaner and is a breeze to clean up!
- Big IKEA bookshelf with all the toys hid in baskets. I decided to move it from sunroom here, and boy what a difference it made! They used to have more than half of their toys on display here, that resulted both mess, and them saying “I’m bored” why too often. Because since I stopped with the toy rotation ( the basement renovation made me do it – had no more space to store toys anymore) they would see all their toys at once, and feel overwhelmed. So now, they are all stored and hidden. And it makes clean up easier too.
See, this room is definitely not big, but I think it responds perfectly to their needs: there’s place to sleep, space to read, and space to play. And they still get to be close, which if you ask them, is the best part!
And if you’re curious about the resources then here they are:
- Bunk bed, dresser and pink rug- Wayfair
- The bookshelf with it’s baskets, shelves, frames and the play kitchen- Ikea
- Wall hanging and blue basket- Homesense
- Baskets – the yellow one: Lorena Canal rugs; the gold one -Souris Mini
- The doughnut pillow :Souris Mini
- Prints- mix of free printables ( pinned here) my own printables ( here and here) and my paintings.