Sneak Peek | Evie + John’s new play space

82e4c971-4b9a-4c5a-8f78-400e015971d5

A sneak peek of a fun play space we finished installing today. The family had recently moved into a new home and were trying to find ways to entice their kids down to the basement play space. The bunk bed from their old house was being used for play (and storage 😉 in the room, so we repurposed it by adding a railing up top to create a loft. The bottom became a cozy reading nook with added bookshelves, reading lamp, and twinkle lights. My most favorite addition however is the pulley system in the loft, which is controlled with the turn of a ship’s steering wheel. And at the end of the rope is a basket for all your little ones treasures (of course)!

The ‘Thoughtbarn’ Playhive you’re going to NEED!

Processed with VSCO with kk2 preset

Many many years ago before we had kids, I discovered Thoughtbarn’s amazing ‘Playhive’. It was love at first sight and I always dreamed of building it at one of the schools I worked at. Fast forward to life as a mama at home with a toddler and I decided that now was the time to make that dream a reality for us. Enter my lovely husband who makes all my crazy dreams and aspirations come true, a few months of tacking away at it (because every single piece needed to be cut and sanded by hand) and finally we had our very own Hive. And the best part – you can build your own too, because Thoughtbarn is insanely rad and shares the plans for FREE! Download them HERE.

Update – over the years we decided to pimp out our Hive a little, by adding a slide and also most recently a play telescope. This created new invitations to play and has revigorized how our boys and their friends use it.

Processed with VSCO with kk2 preset
Processed with VSCO with kk2 prese

An indoor cube ‘clubhouse’ (as my boys like to call it).

Processed with VSCO with kk2 preset

A couple of years ago my lovely husband built this cube for our boys for Christmas. They ending up only wanting to play on top of it, so it was relegated to the basement. Fast forward to now, and while working on building a bookcase for a family using fun legs from DIY Hairpin Legs, I had the happy thought that our boys would love the cube if it was lofted vs sitting on the ground. So I bought some fun super tall hairpin legs for us (our house is tiny, so the space under it needed to still be usable too) and voila, this magic happened today. A ladder* still needs to be made, but for now our trusty Tripp Trapp chair by Stokke works perfectly.

*update – a ladder has been made, hooray!