Our Playroom!!!

As we were preparing for Kolby to join our family we realized that we were running out of room. Our house was feeling crammed and toys seemed to be everywhere and so we decided to get a project done that I'd been wanting to do for years. After we moved into our house and got to know friends in our neighborhood I saw that many of them had finished half of their crawl space to make a playroom, the other half was for storage. It doesn't really sound cute, but it was when you saw it. So I told LeGrand all about it and it took me about 3 years to get him excited about it too. We went around and looked at some of the neighborhood playrooms and started talking to people. Lots of people that had done theirs offered to help us. To make a long story shorter we started our playroom at the end of October. Since LeGrand is in the bishopric and teaches Institute on Wednesday nights, he didn't have tons of spare time, but what time he had he was down working really hard. We were soooo blessed to have friends like Kevin and Lona Marie Cook, Kathryn Stitt, Candace Carter, Cody Larsen and Dad Ras to help us. LeGrand and Kevin did most of the work, but as you can tell they turned what use to be a dungeon into the coolest playroom ever!! This was a fun project for our family. The kids LOVED helping in any way that they could. They loved hammering nails(even though Brayden smashed his thumb really hard and still has a black/purple thumb nail) sweeping, holding lights, retrieving tools, painting... I was down there as much as I could be, but with being big pregnant I couldn't be down there with all the dust and fumes and it wasn't really comfortable down there anyways=) I was amazed at LeGrand and his handy man skills. He enjoyed working with and learning from Kevin. It was kind of funny to see both of them down there, LeGrand is 6'1" and Kevin is probably about 6'4", their knees and backs were really sore. They did such a great job!! LeGrand, Thank You for all your work and the hours that you spent building something fun for our kids and me!!! Our home feels so much bigger now and it's so much easier to keep clean. I can't thank you enough, it's way better than I ever dreamed it would be. We actually just got it all the way done this week, the reason for this is because at first we just decided to carpet it this pieces of our old carpet, but we didn't really like it so we just went and got a big piece of carpet and put it down there. It is sooo much nicer now!!! We hope you enjoy our pictures...I didn't take very many "before" pictures, which I should have done, but this these two you get the picture. It was dark(not lights on that side), cement walls... yup it was our little dungeon.

The kids loved being involved!

Our helpers!!!

Painting away... We are getting closer to being done!!!

The kids decided that the theme they wanted was to paint the playroom like it was outside, with sky, the sun, clouds, grass ect... It made it fun and easy to decorate. We did a chalk board, using the chalk board spray paint. They use it all the time!!!! We painted the walls, the sun, the clouds and the grass, and our good friend Candace Carter came over and actually did the birds, the butterflies, the spider in the corner. We decided we wanted to hide all the kids names in the artwork in the room so Candace drew and painted these too....

Don't ask me why we didn't just get new carpet for it before we got all the toys down there. But here is our huge mess on the storage side as we layed the new carpet. It was well worth it, but it was messy and a huge job that we put on ourselves. If your going to do a project, do it right the first time!!! We learned this the hard way!=)

Obviously this is before we got all the toys back in there, but you get the picture. We have already had sooooo much fun down here, we have had slumber parties, played for hours and hours, read for hours in the library corner. I absolutely love it, the kids can go down and play and the mess is contained and I can have a few minutes of quiet while I make dinner. The whole house has more room cause all the toys are in the play room and it's not as messy!!! Yeahhhhhh!!! Welcome to our New Playroom!!!! Thanks LeGrand!!!!!