This is not some kind of Pottery Barn/Dwell magazine beautiful play space reveal. This is a down and dirty garage playroom that my kids can f*ck up.
My kids have reached the age where they desperately want their own space to mess around in. And I have reached a point where I don’t want them anywhere near me while they do this.
When we first bought our weird ramshackle cabin in the Catskills the two story garage was filled from the floor to the ceiling with old crap the sellers never moved. It took about six dumpsters and a ton of junk sales to get rid of everything. We had big dreams of turning the barn/garage into a guest house but the estimates for any kind of real renovation are bananas.
Still, the space is great and is totally unused. Even without a ton of insulation it will stay cool enough with fans in the summer and warm enough with heaters through most of the winter months. We had so many starts and stops on this project along the way, mostly because we got it in our heads that it had to be all or nothing. It had to be the perfectly renovated play space with all the amenities if we even wanted to get started.
One weekend, after an entire week of pouring rain, I just said FUCK IT….we are gonna get started. Because perfection is the enemy of done.
The biggest issue upstairs is that there were no real walls. We spent about $200 on lumber and plywood to secure the space before we got started. Nick Aster did all the drilling and the sawing of things. He likes being handy. And then we had to figure out what would go in it. My goal was to repurpose things we already had and to go thrifting and junk sale-ing. We also asked our neighbors what they wanted to give away.
Kids don’t really want or need fancy things. And I think the most important thing we did with this was to give the kids agency. We literally asked what do you want in there and how do you want to use the space?
The result has actually been spectacular and I am now obsessed with this space. Our kids have spent hours and hours up there. We have even come up and hung out in the reading nook while they played with the sub par air hockey table. Estimates to fix up the garage were in the five figures. We spent $250 all in at the lumber yard and at thrift stores and junk sales.
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