House Tour: Dining Room Turned Play Room

Not to sound creepy, but I've always liked looking in people's windows. Ha, I guess that does sound creepy! I never cared to see actual people, rather, I like to see what people do with the space they have. How do they decorate? How do they arrange furniture? How do they store their crap stuff?

So, figuring you all feel the same, I'm going to give you a house tour, one room at a time.

Today's feature brings us to the dining room.

Originally, this room was built as the master bedroom in our home's three-room structure.

This is our house when my husband's great-grandfather built it, in the early 1900s. It had three rooms: a living area where the kids slept at night, a kitchen, and a bedroom (for the parents). I assume there was an outhouse at back somewhere.

As you can see below, the "master bedroom" had several built-ins for closet space. The picture below is one I took when it was empty and we were touring it before purchasing it from my husband's great-aunt. The dresser set to the right there was actually a spot where a murphy bed used to pull down. It was smaller than a twin size! That is, apparently, where his great-grandparents slept!

Marcus's great-aunt, from whom we bought the house, was born in the home and lived there until she moved to an assisted living facility with her husband. When her parents passed away, they turned this room into a dining room and when we'd come over to visit on occasion, it'd look like this:

Obviously they didn't use it much for dining!

In fact, they ended up giving us their table, which we used in our apartment when we lived in the Chicago area. When we bought the house from them, we put the table back in. And gave the room a fresh paint job from the "salmon bomb" (we affectionately called it) that covered the entire dining room and living room, and ripped up the carpet.

Also, our dining room rarely to never actually looked like this. Later, my husband refinished the floors, but then most of the time the table was shoved into the corner like in that picture from before we moved in and we pretty much never even walked in that room. We have a great eat-in space in the kitchen and the dining room was too small to host many events, and though we did host Thanksgiving one year, it was really tight.

So, a few years later....I had the brilliant idea of changing it into a play room. I figured, we weren't using that space AT ALL and our living room was slowly becoming overgrown with toys. Hubby said to go for it. So, I took Burkley to Lowe's and we picked out a rug. I snagged some bean bag chairs on sale at Target. And one day while Cadriel was napping, B and I moved everything into the playroom and got organized. It was fun to do it with him and the room just feels so great!

I really, really like having a space that doesn't have to stay clean and tidy and where the kids can go entertain themselves while I shower or cook or whatever.

Burkley's playing peek-a-boo here with Cadriel. Lately he's been playing with Cadriel a lot more, which makes all of us happy.

I'll sum up our dining-room-turned-play-room adventure in one phrase, which Marcus said to me the other day: "That play room idea you had? Best. Idea. Ever."

:)