My Indoor Playground
A Little Back Story
My husband and I were home searching and we came across this house. It was perfect. We wanted this house. We felt like this house was for us and we could picture our children growing up here. It was definitely not what we had in mind at first because it was actually $20,000 more than our MAX budget. It was a crazy decision and we were 100% going by sure faith alone. We knew that it felt right. Everything went perfectly and we knew that it happened so simply, because it was a sign that this was supposed to be our home. I cried when our offer was accepted. The previous owners took SUCH great care of their home. It was beautiful. You could see the pride they had in their home. We still need to fix a bath drip, but that was really the only thing that "had" to be...which we still haven't done. OOPS. However, the one thing that we were not planning was having to replace the flooring. We knew the flooring would eventually need to be replaced (just because it was the original carpet), but when we moved in the house it smelled pretty bad, of pee. There were also huge stains of pee throughout the house. We didn't see it when we were touring the home, because little rugs and furniture were covering the HUGE pee spots. We were already $20,000 over our MAX and so we were already going to be living paycheck to paycheck, so we had NO chance of buying new flooring. To floor our home would be a minimum of $7,000. Therefore, it was just something we had to deal with.
Our Animals Made It Worse
When we got out puppy and we started trying to potty train our cutie Rocky and it has been almost impossible. Our whole house smelled like pee. Our dog couldn't figure out why there was dog pee everywhere and yet he wasn't allowed to pee inside. It has been a constant battle. He is 7 months old and he is STILL having trouble. We even puppy sat and the dog was a grown dog who is 5 years old and even HE peed in our house (he has never ever had any accidents). Our house is just a big pee pad.
Well, our front room was the worst and so our puppy just kept peeing in there. Over and over and over. Well, then our cat started getting frustrated because the whole house smelled like the dog and other dogs. SO then our stupid cat started using the ENTIRE front room as a place to pee.
I started smelling the floor more and more and so I grabbed my awesome carpet cleaner and went to work. I had cleaned the carpet several times, but I never used the scrubbing tool. I started using my tool and just scrubbing my carpet like crazy. It made it worse! All of the pee fumes just went into the air. Our whole house smelled SO bad! Everywhere in our home stunk. We tried to wait it out, but it just din't go away.
I finally had enough when I was sleeping in our bed and I woke up and could smell it from all the way upstairs.
Taking Action
I couldn't handle the smell anymore and so I started doing research. I started calling people, looking into different flooring ideas and tried to figure out how much flooring would cost. We decided that we were going to use our tax refunds to be able to pay for the new flooring. I told my husband that I just couldn't handle the smell. I am insanely sick during this pregnancy and constant pee smell was NOT helping in the slightest. I told Derek I was done smelling it and I took action.
I started ripping up all of the carpet. You guys. It was the worst smell. The carpet was completely stained underneath and our carpet pads were tinted yellow. As I started ripping up the flooring I was moving all of the furniture.
My boys thought this was the most fun project ever! They loved helping.
Even baby Maverick started getting into the fun!
I pulled up all of the carpet and all of the carpet pads. I then went around and pulled up all of the staples and all of the nails.
My boys loved the open space and immediately started bringing in their toys into the room. They thought it was the coolest thing to have a big open area where there was nothing in their way.
While I was doing the dishes I would even look over and I kept seeing Maverick rocking on his horse in the open area. I started wondering if I even wanted to put furniture in this room again.
Once I moved the carpet into the garage our house smelled for one more day and then the smell was gone. Our garage was a different story. I didn't even want to go into our garage, because it smelled so terrible.
The hardest part was our house was SO messy while undertaking this project, because all of our furniture was spread out throughout our home. Our coffee tables with in the living room, our piano was in the hall, our wing back chair was in the living room and all of our other furniture went into the garage.
After realizing how much my kids LOVED the empty room I started selling my furnitre and I moved the piano into our office.
Our NEW floors!
It looked like a whole new room!
We Wanted An Indoor Playground
I promised myself that I would never be a boring adult. I promised myself that I would never fill up my house with furniture. It seems like all older people have SO MUCH STUFF. They have tons of furniture, nick knacks and lots of unnecessary home decor. When we moved into this house we had a very large front room that I was very excited to make a room that was the "nice room." A room where our guests could come over or something. The front room has gone through quite a few different arrangements so far. We bought a rug, a couch and a wing back chair. I even put my dining table into the room so that it would look nicer, but nothing ever felt right.
When we tore up the couch, it hit me. I really didn't want anything in that room. The kids ran and played around in the big open space where the carpet used to be. I asked Derek if it would be okay if we sold our furniture and then put our outdoor little tikes playground into our front room. Derek was all for not putting the furniture back in to the front room, but he was a little hesitant about the indoor playground. The little tikes playground has always been outside and so it was very dirty. We got it for free about a year ago.
Our Indoor Playground
The next morning I took the little tikes playground down and cleaned it from top to bottom.
And then I started rebuilding it in the front room.
After I put the play structure in there I decided I did not want to stop there! So, I started adding things to the room to make it even cooler!
The kids have had a lot of fun in this room! They ride their bikes around and run into each other. They are having a blast. This has been quite the fun change in our home and I am so happy that were able to do this.
I have decided that this room will always be the FUN room. As our kids get older it can evolve. When they get older it can turn into a room with an air hockey table, ping pong, and foos ball table (wait, how do you spell that??). I then want to add barn sliding doors so that my kids can hang out in there and have tons of fun! I am so excited for this change. I refuse to be a boring adult and this is my first step!
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