I love rearranging furniture and shopping my home and stash to transform spaces in our house. But I especially love it when I manage to create my new favourite place to hang out!
Have you heard of a Pyjama Lounge? Am I talking crazy talk? My kids think I am, they hate it when I refer to the spare bedroom as the Pyjama Lounge, but I just think it’s funny. Why you might ask? Well, one of my go-to podcasts, Young House Love Has A Podcast, mentioned it in one of their weekly episodes { which you can check out HERE } and for some reason it stuck in my brain. And this was long before we created the space even…but it stayed in my brain, rattling around, waiting for the perfect chance to pop out – when we created a cozy spot in our back bedroom, apparently! And so you don’t think I’m completely off my rocker, even Apartment Therapy thinks its the cool thing to have in your home – you can read their article HERE.
Also, do you spell it P-Y-J-A-M-A or P-A-J-A-M-A? I googled it….I’m a Canadian who reads a lot of books based in old Europe so I use Pyjama…. Random things that come to my attention while writing a blog post!
Anyway!!!!
Let me back up a little for you. Nearly 4 years ago when we moved into our ‘new’ home, Hannah scored herself the biggest bedroom in the house. She had all the toys, the bunk bed, the play kitchen, kids table and chairs – basically all the fun kid-stuff in her room. Here are some before pictures:
When we first moved in…
Fast forward to Winter 2017 when Lena begged to move into what was then our back bedroom. It was our home office and spare room. And that’s the bed that all the clean, unfolded laundry would land on. It’s the smallest, most awkward room but it has a pretty sweet view over the hills and the horse pasture….which is exactly why Lena wanted it. And besides, switching up rooms as a kid is just plain fun – I haven’t outgrown that yet 😉
So, Lena moved into the back bedroom and before we started shuffling beds, dressers and stuff, Hannah asked if she could take over Lena’s old bedroom. And since I had no real reason to say no, she moved in there with half the toys she had and the rest got purged. It took some time because I was doing it with just their help, Michael happened to be away when all this happened. And it was a case of this had to move before you could move that and that other thing had to switch with that and so on and so on until finally each girl had their own stuff in their new space and I had a new spare bedroom and home office that was much roomier. There was still the patching of walls, touching up the paint and then rehanging their own decorations….that part of it only took me about a year to get done 😉
All along, the plan for the back bedroom, was not only spare bed and office, but also a little sitting area, originally for Michael. Now, even though the rooms have switched, the spare room is still on the back of the house and it still gets called ‘the back bedroom’. But now that the back bedroom actually had more square footage, we had room to finally make that sitting area we talked about for years! We hauled up the comfiest arm chair we own, a yard sale find that I upholstered while on maternity leave with Hannah, and tucked it by the window.
The room had been painted before we moved in and it was the prettiest shade of green. But after nearly 4 years of living, it needed to be painted again. So I grabbed my bucket of paint and got to work. The above picture is everything piled into the center of the room so I could paint. Hannah came in to give me a hand, too, she likes painting, too, and I like her company. I hung curtains I had for The Verandah that never got used, a $13 score from Winners. And then got to work putting everything back together. I stole my rug back from Lena’s room, lugged up another chair from my stash and grabbed a little table for between the chairs. I wanted a lamp, so again I turned to my stash and used a wooden base that I had found years ago at a local yard sale and then stole the shade from Lena’s lamp….poor Lena!!!
The colour palette was kind of based off the green arm chair and the yellows in the fluted chair, along with some tones in the rug. I also painted my old wooden desk chair in Miss Mustard Seed Boxwood and sanded it way back so it looks like the paint has worn off from years of use. And then the art that I started adding to my gallery wall just carried it along that path even more. My grandmother’s painting, a few embroidery pieces that I was given when both my in-laws and parents were in the process of downsizing, a piece that I did, a tiny house on a hill painting…the gallery wall will grow and expand, especially as we get into yardsale season 😉 But that’s the fun part of it, too!
I find myself in here most evenings, laptop on my lap and a quilt wrapped around me. It’s a cozy spot to curl up at the end of the day. It’s relaxing and quiet. There’s no TV, but if I want to watch Netflix, I have my laptop or my phone. It’s also a great spot to read, too. It’s such a luxury to be able to curl up with a good book!
And the best part – do you want to know how much I spent on this room update? Zero. Zilch. Zip. Every last thing was already in my possession. This is the benefit of shopping your home and having a stock pile of furniture to draw from. { The down side is all the extra stuff takes up space which I also struggle with, you can read about that HERE and HERE } The paint was leftover, the art was kicking around, and I always have various colours of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint on hand so I can paint something at the drop of a hat. Like the day I decided I wanted to paint the little table yellow – so I took it out to the studio and painted it.
I hope you enjoyed the little tour of our back bedroom – I have it all fluffed and ready because Janice came to visit this weekend!! We chatted, watched a great movie and hit IKEA!! Sooo much fun!!
To be continued,
Lori
