I was content to just let this room be, but there were a couple mornings where we had visits from subs to fix a couple things around the house, and when we have indoor visitors, Gus is a bit of a challenge. He's socially inept. :) We all have our areas for improvement, right? So, there were a couple days where Mom was coerced volunteered into hanging out in the game room with the kids and Gus with the door closed. During that time she sort of compulsively rearranged furniture, laid out our big area rug, and organized toys!
So that got the ball rolling. Then, when we heard nugget and doodle's little cousins were coming to spend the weekend for their birthday party, we knew we had to get some window treatments up in case anyone ended up sleeping in there, and they did!
So those were the two key catalysts to the progress in this room and I'm so grateful for both!
As a reminder, here's what it looked like during our transition phase, where we focused our efforts basically everywhere else inside and outside the house, and left the game room alone. Yikes!
I didn't put much design thought into this room aside from shape/size for multiple uses over the coming years. Towards the end of construction I got hung up on the idea of a sport-themed room when Brent's parents dropped off his old football locker room locker door from high school. Tres vintage! Don't laugh, they were Missouri state champs!! That's almost as big a deal as Texas state champs! :) Plus, we found our old varsity letter jackets from our respective high schools, and we both have a nice collection of great sport action photos from football, basketball, and volleyball. I also have a pretty intense framed and signed jersey from Paul Pierce in his Celtics days. I still bleed Boston pride, but can't say I'm a huge Pierce fan. All that said, once we moved into the house, the sports thing just didn't seem to fit. So instead, it sort of came together one piece at a time with no particular direction in mind, which as you all know by know, is very uncharacteristic of me.
In addition to organizing furniture and toys and laying the rug, I think the biggest impact in the room is from the window treatments! I hung the same Ikea cotton-like sheers as our other rooms. Here's a tip on Ikea's sheers. They are miserable to iron, but I discovered (with 6 panels to iron) that if you fold it in half you can iron through two layers at a time and it fits on the ironing board without having to keep nudging left and right to get the whole width ironed. Then just go back and remove the fold line and it cuts the ironing in half! You're welcome! The curtain panels are from Overstock. They're hardcore blackout curtains. Like, be-careful-or-you'll-stub-your-toe-in-the-dark-in-the-middle-of-the-day-blackout curtains! These curtains got rave reviews online, and overstock curtains haven't failed me yet! Plus, they were super reasonably priced, especially for blackout curtains. The only risk was they didn't show color swatches - just a list of color names. I went with Royal Blue in the hopes that it would be fun and whimsical, but not wild or childish. Truthfully, I didn't have a color in mind until I found these curtains and I just sort of picked from the list of names and then that became the new direction! In the package I was a little concerned because they did look very very bright and the fabric felt a bit rubbery. But once ironed and hung, wow! They feel really luxurious, and I love the color and think it really hit the mark with what I was going for.
Here's the tieback against a white sink so you can see the color. A little bright for six 108" panels right? You need to make it through the whole post to see the actual curtains. :)
That said, the biggest impact to my enjoyment of this room comes from the deep cleaning of our sectional! I was so embarrassed by this couch and have been for so long. Don't judge - I'm posting a photo of the before state. Our kids don't run around diaper-less, and we're not running a frat house here, I swear! The color is off in this photo, but the stains are unfortunately accurately depicted.
This is microfiber, and for those of you with microfiber couches that have attempted to use water to clean spills, or who have just spilled or dripped water onto the fabric you know that water actually leaves stains worse than the original spill or stain itself! So, 7+ years of dog slobber, sippy cup spills, wet splotches from blankets that get chewed on, botched attempts to clean all of the above, all combined with hating the color of the sofa from the day it was delivered... This couch was doomed from the beginning and continued to spiral out of control as the sofa got splotchier and splotchier.
Then Pinterest saved the day. I stumbled on a pin with step by step instructions to clean a microfiber sofa here. Thing is, this blogger was in the exact same boat. I considered tossing the sofa and buying a new one. I considered fabric upholstery painting techniques, evidenced by the red test pillows in the corner of the first picture that were a pinterest fail. I considered expensive slipcovers and even reupholstering it which would take me about 4 years. So this was a last ditch effort that totally paid off. Evidently the method works on all sorts of stains including ink pens! You can read the step by step on their blog, but basically the trick is using rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle and scrubbing with a white sponge and then you run a scrub brush over it to fluff the fabric again when dry. It feels exactly the same, only cleaner. It doesn't change the texture at all! This is life changing information folks. The sofa looks new again and will be a perfectly suitable sectional for our game room for many more years. Plus, the bright blue of the curtains seems to make the color of the sofa less dreadful somehow.
Check out the after:
Amazing, right?? Thank goodness!
So, now with curtains and a freshly cleaned couch, I decided the heinous red painted pillows needed to go. Feeling inspired by all the neons I was working with for the kids birthday party, I found this amazing outdoor fabric at our local Joann's. They only had a little under 2 yards (54" width), and I had 3 full size pillows to cover, so I bought it all and planned to just figure it out when I got it home. :) The pillows are square box pillows with a 3" width panel and piping around both sides of the pillow which make it MUCH more difficult to cover. So mom suggested I cut into it and hope for an insert. So I did but with no luck. It was just loose stuffing. Serendipity! I was able to just divide the fabric evenly and cut it into squares for 3 pillows without worrying about the insert size v. the shortage of fabric I had, meaning I might end up with 3 slightly smaller pillows, but at least I'd have 3 complete pillows. So I cut the fabric, and then mom sewed and stuff them for me. In all fairness I believe while she sewed I was reupholstering her headboard or painting her side table or something. :) Speaking of, I think we need a post on her guest bedroom makeover!!!
Here's the pillow fabric! Again, you're almost to the bottom. No scrolling down and cheating. Wait for the reveal.
Once I got that little taste of neon in the room I needed more more more!!! In my hunt for coordinating fabrics for the backs of the pillows I came across this neon yellow "safety" utility fabric. Yes, as in the stuff a policeman might wear on a nighttime road construction detail job! I actually apologized to the woman at Joann's who had to cut it for me because I'm pretty sure she had a bright yellow spot in her vision for the rest of the day! But where to use this insane fabric you ask?? Well, we brought all our ikea fabric bins from our last house, but they were kelly green and hot pink. We stuff all the kids toys into the bins that get stored in our white Expedit storage cubes. That was cute when pink and green were the only colors in the toy room in our last basement. However, it was not working in this room which is more than just toys.
When you need 16 bins at a time, it's not cheap to replace them with Ikea's color of the month with every decorating whim. So I just covered one face of the pink bins with the neon yellow, and I got some turquoise fabric as well to cover some black bins. For the most part, the bins aren't usually strewn across the room, so covering one face seems to be sufficient for us. I don't have photos of the process, but it was very simple. I just cut a square of fabric 1/2" longer than the length and width. I sprayed the center of the cube face with some spray adhesive, adhered from the center out, and then used hot glue around the edges while rolling the edges under. I made 4 yellow and 4 turquoise and it was pretty quick. I didn't even iron the fabric before adhering it - gasp!!
Ready to see how it turned out?? It's still a mish mash of leftover furniture that hasn't been incorporated elsewhere in the house, but we've made vast improvements. Now it feels like a real room, and we all enjoy spending a lot of time in there.
Reminder Before:
AFTER:
So, the rug is also 7+ years old. We've put it through the ringer too and it's held up great! Thank you Crate and Barrel!! I guess we're consistent in floor covering color choices. :) When we chose this tile we weren't thinking of using this rug in here. Just sort of happened.
or..................... maybe our choice of fur babies is indicative of our choice in flooring! :) Such a sad face Gussy bear! Clearly I disrupted his afternoon slumber.
Hope you enjoyed! I think the room is just missing some of the kids' masterpiece artwork above their toy storage and the room will be complete for now. It's not meticulously planned like the rest of the house, but maybe that's why it's so satisfying? That, and there are empty places to sit now on most days. :)
So that got the ball rolling. Then, when we heard nugget and doodle's little cousins were coming to spend the weekend for their birthday party, we knew we had to get some window treatments up in case anyone ended up sleeping in there, and they did!
So those were the two key catalysts to the progress in this room and I'm so grateful for both!
As a reminder, here's what it looked like during our transition phase, where we focused our efforts basically everywhere else inside and outside the house, and left the game room alone. Yikes!
I didn't put much design thought into this room aside from shape/size for multiple uses over the coming years. Towards the end of construction I got hung up on the idea of a sport-themed room when Brent's parents dropped off his old football locker room locker door from high school. Tres vintage! Don't laugh, they were Missouri state champs!! That's almost as big a deal as Texas state champs! :) Plus, we found our old varsity letter jackets from our respective high schools, and we both have a nice collection of great sport action photos from football, basketball, and volleyball. I also have a pretty intense framed and signed jersey from Paul Pierce in his Celtics days. I still bleed Boston pride, but can't say I'm a huge Pierce fan. All that said, once we moved into the house, the sports thing just didn't seem to fit. So instead, it sort of came together one piece at a time with no particular direction in mind, which as you all know by know, is very uncharacteristic of me.
In addition to organizing furniture and toys and laying the rug, I think the biggest impact in the room is from the window treatments! I hung the same Ikea cotton-like sheers as our other rooms. Here's a tip on Ikea's sheers. They are miserable to iron, but I discovered (with 6 panels to iron) that if you fold it in half you can iron through two layers at a time and it fits on the ironing board without having to keep nudging left and right to get the whole width ironed. Then just go back and remove the fold line and it cuts the ironing in half! You're welcome! The curtain panels are from Overstock. They're hardcore blackout curtains. Like, be-careful-or-you'll-stub-your-toe-in-the-dark-in-the-middle-of-the-day-blackout curtains! These curtains got rave reviews online, and overstock curtains haven't failed me yet! Plus, they were super reasonably priced, especially for blackout curtains. The only risk was they didn't show color swatches - just a list of color names. I went with Royal Blue in the hopes that it would be fun and whimsical, but not wild or childish. Truthfully, I didn't have a color in mind until I found these curtains and I just sort of picked from the list of names and then that became the new direction! In the package I was a little concerned because they did look very very bright and the fabric felt a bit rubbery. But once ironed and hung, wow! They feel really luxurious, and I love the color and think it really hit the mark with what I was going for.
Here's the tieback against a white sink so you can see the color. A little bright for six 108" panels right? You need to make it through the whole post to see the actual curtains. :)
That said, the biggest impact to my enjoyment of this room comes from the deep cleaning of our sectional! I was so embarrassed by this couch and have been for so long. Don't judge - I'm posting a photo of the before state. Our kids don't run around diaper-less, and we're not running a frat house here, I swear! The color is off in this photo, but the stains are unfortunately accurately depicted.
This is microfiber, and for those of you with microfiber couches that have attempted to use water to clean spills, or who have just spilled or dripped water onto the fabric you know that water actually leaves stains worse than the original spill or stain itself! So, 7+ years of dog slobber, sippy cup spills, wet splotches from blankets that get chewed on, botched attempts to clean all of the above, all combined with hating the color of the sofa from the day it was delivered... This couch was doomed from the beginning and continued to spiral out of control as the sofa got splotchier and splotchier.
Then Pinterest saved the day. I stumbled on a pin with step by step instructions to clean a microfiber sofa here. Thing is, this blogger was in the exact same boat. I considered tossing the sofa and buying a new one. I considered fabric upholstery painting techniques, evidenced by the red test pillows in the corner of the first picture that were a pinterest fail. I considered expensive slipcovers and even reupholstering it which would take me about 4 years. So this was a last ditch effort that totally paid off. Evidently the method works on all sorts of stains including ink pens! You can read the step by step on their blog, but basically the trick is using rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle and scrubbing with a white sponge and then you run a scrub brush over it to fluff the fabric again when dry. It feels exactly the same, only cleaner. It doesn't change the texture at all! This is life changing information folks. The sofa looks new again and will be a perfectly suitable sectional for our game room for many more years. Plus, the bright blue of the curtains seems to make the color of the sofa less dreadful somehow.
Check out the after:
Amazing, right?? Thank goodness!
So, now with curtains and a freshly cleaned couch, I decided the heinous red painted pillows needed to go. Feeling inspired by all the neons I was working with for the kids birthday party, I found this amazing outdoor fabric at our local Joann's. They only had a little under 2 yards (54" width), and I had 3 full size pillows to cover, so I bought it all and planned to just figure it out when I got it home. :) The pillows are square box pillows with a 3" width panel and piping around both sides of the pillow which make it MUCH more difficult to cover. So mom suggested I cut into it and hope for an insert. So I did but with no luck. It was just loose stuffing. Serendipity! I was able to just divide the fabric evenly and cut it into squares for 3 pillows without worrying about the insert size v. the shortage of fabric I had, meaning I might end up with 3 slightly smaller pillows, but at least I'd have 3 complete pillows. So I cut the fabric, and then mom sewed and stuff them for me. In all fairness I believe while she sewed I was reupholstering her headboard or painting her side table or something. :) Speaking of, I think we need a post on her guest bedroom makeover!!!
Here's the pillow fabric! Again, you're almost to the bottom. No scrolling down and cheating. Wait for the reveal.
Once I got that little taste of neon in the room I needed more more more!!! In my hunt for coordinating fabrics for the backs of the pillows I came across this neon yellow "safety" utility fabric. Yes, as in the stuff a policeman might wear on a nighttime road construction detail job! I actually apologized to the woman at Joann's who had to cut it for me because I'm pretty sure she had a bright yellow spot in her vision for the rest of the day! But where to use this insane fabric you ask?? Well, we brought all our ikea fabric bins from our last house, but they were kelly green and hot pink. We stuff all the kids toys into the bins that get stored in our white Expedit storage cubes. That was cute when pink and green were the only colors in the toy room in our last basement. However, it was not working in this room which is more than just toys.
When you need 16 bins at a time, it's not cheap to replace them with Ikea's color of the month with every decorating whim. So I just covered one face of the pink bins with the neon yellow, and I got some turquoise fabric as well to cover some black bins. For the most part, the bins aren't usually strewn across the room, so covering one face seems to be sufficient for us. I don't have photos of the process, but it was very simple. I just cut a square of fabric 1/2" longer than the length and width. I sprayed the center of the cube face with some spray adhesive, adhered from the center out, and then used hot glue around the edges while rolling the edges under. I made 4 yellow and 4 turquoise and it was pretty quick. I didn't even iron the fabric before adhering it - gasp!!
Ready to see how it turned out?? It's still a mish mash of leftover furniture that hasn't been incorporated elsewhere in the house, but we've made vast improvements. Now it feels like a real room, and we all enjoy spending a lot of time in there.
Reminder Before:
AFTER:
So, the rug is also 7+ years old. We've put it through the ringer too and it's held up great! Thank you Crate and Barrel!! I guess we're consistent in floor covering color choices. :) When we chose this tile we weren't thinking of using this rug in here. Just sort of happened.
Hope you enjoyed! I think the room is just missing some of the kids' masterpiece artwork above their toy storage and the room will be complete for now. It's not meticulously planned like the rest of the house, but maybe that's why it's so satisfying? That, and there are empty places to sit now on most days. :)
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