Thursday, June 11, 2015

0 The Children Under the Stairs - Creating a Playroom Pt. 2

The playroom has been a huge success in creating a comfortable and organized place on our main floor for all the toys, but it hadn't yet met the demand for storage. Some of that is our inability (lack of time) to separate all the toys for what needs to be downstairs and what should be in storage for now.

To alleviate some of that pressure, and because I still have quite a bit of flooring left, I created some extra shelving.

Some time ago, I purchased a small cube storage unit with fabric boxes from Y.E.S.S. Thrift (probably my favorite and most frequented second hand/estate sale overflow shop in GR) for just $18. With no clear purpose at the time, my hoarding was once again justified in this application.

I'll warn you right now, this is a largely text-based post, since I was trying really hard to get this done and didn't take the time to snap a lot of shots.

In the playroom, on one side, there is a border of 1x2's around the ceiling just on two sides, so I had to add that same thing on the third side. I also had to add a 1x2 along where the joist is so the shelf had something to grab to when I screwed it in. You can see both of those in the pic below.

Since the shelves I'd be making out of flooring planks didn't have to hold a lot of weight, I just cut scraps and spaced them to the width of a plank, and secured them to the side of the cube storage. The top two were 5" and the bottom one was 6". Since most of the vehicles I was looking to store on these shelves are only 5" tall, I was able to get three shelves within the space.


I then did the same thing on the other side, using a flooring plank situated vertically, and with the same size scraps spaced exactly the same way. They're secured with caulk (what I had laying around) and 1-1/8" brad nails.

When put all in place, the shelf planks just slid right into the gaps. I then secured them from the sides with brad nails. The bottom shelf I actually made the full length of the wall and nailed it to the bottom of the cube unit.


Strangely enough, I purchased the fabric boxes with the cube storage separate from Becky purchasing the big fabric storage cubes - so it's completely coincidental that they match.  I thought at first that the cubes in the unit would be too small to really hold a lot, but when you're talking about little animals, wood blocks, small cars, etc. they actually worked out perfectly.


We're not quite done, but if I stopped now, it's already pretty sweet, so I feel pretty great about it. Next I'll be wrapping more flooring around where the light switch is, and maybe adding more shelving to the other side.
 

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