Our Art Room and Playhouse

We finished our basement 2 days before Clara was born.  Talk about cutting it close!  One of the best pieces of advice we got when we decided to finish the basement was from my mom.  We were trying to figure out how to design the basement and our thoughts kept drifting towards resale value.  What would the next buyer of our house want?  The advice my mom gave us was that if we planned to live in this house for a while (which we do) than we should build a basement that works for our family, not for the next family or the next family or the next.  I'm so glad that we did that.  Not only did it make everything much more fun but I LOVE the way it turned out!  

I wanted an area of the house where the kids could have fun and make messes and I didn't have to enforce cleaning it up everyday.  Our basement is a kid zone.  My favorite part of the basement is the Art Room and Playhouse.  I searched all over the Internet and Pinterest for ideas on designing the Art Room and Playhouse.  Here's how it all turned out:

 The kids area: The table and chairs are from Pottery Barn Kids, the rug is from Overstock.

I found the Picasso decal on Wall Written.com.  I bought a piece of wood from Lowes, sanded and painted it and then drilled big clips into it that I found at The White Hare, a home decor store.

This key hanger came from Home Goods.  It's perfect for our art smocks.

My next project is going to be organizing my closet.  Here's hoping The Container Store has a sale soon!

My area: The walls need some love and color, but I haven't had time to figure out what I want yet.

I found the counter top height table at Pier 1.  If you sign up for a credit card you get 20% off your first purchase!!  I had a piece of glass cut for the top so I didn't ruin the wood.  The rug is from Overstock.

The decal came from Wall Written.com.

Our contractor installed the cabinets and floor, which is tile that looks like hard wood.  I wanted something durable and water resistant.

Our contractor also installed the slop sink.  This has come in very handy for projects that involve paint, which seems like most of our projects.

I found this shelving piece at Home Goods.

The clear plastic containers came from The Container Store.  I could spend all day there.

At the back of the Art Room there is a door leading to a little playhouse under our stair case.

Our contractor installed the window and built the cute little window frame and window sill.  

I made the address sign using a frame from Hobby Lobby, a piece of wood that I  painted pink and wood numbers from Hobby Lobby that I painted white and glued onto the wood.

I found this flower box at Michael's and my niece painted it white for me.

The flower pots and flowers came from Michael's.  You can get great deals on these when their Spring stuff goes on clearance.

We painted the inside of the playhouse pink and I bought decals of flowers and fairies to decorate the walls.  The decals came from Magic Cabin.com.

We had the electrician install the light switch at a kid height so that they could all reach it.

I'm hoping that I'll find some time to decorate the rest of the basement, but that's a low priority item right now.  Stay tuned...