OUR BONUS ROOM BEFORE

This space is massive and completely unorganized. When we moved into this house, two years ago, we basically plopped down our existing furniture and called it a day. This room, situated at the very end of the long hallway we transformed during last season’s ORC™ (that project is here), has gotten literally no attention. Aside from an occasional vacuuming and stashing of toys, we’ve failed to touch this space in any way.

Because of that, you probably didn’t even know it existed in my home. Sure, there were some occasional glances, like this one:

You can peek into the bonus room from this end of the long upstairs hallway, but notice I’ve kept it intentionally obscured. That’s because it’s really nothing to write home (blog?) about.

The carpet in this room is tattered and stained. In fact, there’s even a piece of the old hallway carpeting still on the stairs! The walls have never been painted but have been patched so that’s looking super cool. And the paint colors? Well, it’s an interesting choice from the previous homeowners to paint half the room yellow and the other half mocha. It’s as if they were going for every paint color that could possibly date this house as quickly as possible.

OUR BONUS ROOM’S CURRENT FUNCTIONALITY

As for purposes served by this space, there’s actually not much going on in here on a daily basis. Christine has a desk in here but we’ve moved her work items downstairs into the office (appropriate, right?!). So now she just sits up here by herself to pay bills. Poor Christine. She really gets the short end of the stick.

It was once a playroom of sorts but our daughter doesn’t really play in here anymore since we moved all her toys into her closet to prepare for life in a smaller home (more on our downsizing plans here).

The giant windows were great for over-wintering my plants but now that the weather has improved (thank you, short Tennessee winters!), I can start dispersing them back around the house and outside on the patio again.

The only real function this space maintains is hidden behind a door you probably haven’t even noticed.

See that disgusting pet door? Yep. That was there when we bought the house and we were so glad to see it because it’s made our lives here a lot fresher.

The room behind that door is an unfinished storage space and it also serves as our cats’ bathroom. Not in a gross way. We don’t let them just go wild in there. It’s just where we house their litter pans.

Oh. And it also houses all our sins, as you can see from the photo above.

Every item we want to hold on to but don’t have a dedicated spot for gets thrown into this giant storage room with absolutely no organization or planning. Sentimental artwork? Our daughter’s old toys? Cat furniture we bought and then they never used? A completely unprotected Christmas tree? Just throw it in there. That’s my motto!

Speaking of artwork, you may notice a complete lack of it in this space.

For a family who loves art as much as we do, we sure haven’t shown it in this room. In fact, nothing about this room really reflects our personalities at all.

That’s gotta change.

We have a lot of sentimental art and home items that we’ve been storing in the cats’ bathroom, errr … unfinished storage space … for two years. It’s time to bring it all out and give it a proper home!

BONUS ROOM REMODEL PLANS

BONUS ROOM TO-DO LIST

install new carpet
paint sidewalls – neutral beige
paint accent walls (pitched) – navy
install wallpaper / acoustic treatment on “stage” wall
install curtains
organize media center
install new door in hallway
replace sofa cover
build “stage” area for dress-up play
add dress-up clothing storage

I really wanted to add a rock-climbing wall like this one from Emily Henderson: