Detail #1: Window Seat Progress!

Sorry about last Thursday. I completely underestimated the amount of effort it would take to prep a preschooler and a toddler for a Valentine's Day party at school. Holy crap.

But anyway. I have pictures!

After looking at the partly-built window seat for a couple of days, I realized that we needed to amp it up a  notch if we really wanted this area to be everything I've dreamed it could be for five years. So I took to Pinterest and perused what other people's window seats looked like and guess what? A great deal of them had flanking bookcases built around them. Eyeballing the space between the window ledge and the back corners of the window seat, I was pretty sure we had just the thing.

And wouldn't you know it, FOR ONCE, some old Ikea Billy bookcases were the PERFECT FIT. 

That never happens with Ikea. It's always some weird European standard size and you have to hack the crap out of it to make it look like it fit to American standard sizes and it's so rarely worth the hassle.

We took the bookcases from the living room that had the kids' books on them, took off the back MDF, spackled the ridges, and tucked those babies right into place:

And speaking of babies, mine were pretty stoked about this whole development:

They pretty much thought we'd just built them a stage for their shenanigans, and acted accordingly:

But you know, it was nice to see them excited about this project between their bedrooms and to take an interest in it. The jumping on the window seat, though, that was not okay. Mostly because it was loud and I was having terrifying visions of them launching off of the window seat and down the stairs to a very expensive and uncomfortable ER visit. But we got a handle on it.

And after a little zhuzhing, this is what we had:

I used some leftover paint in the basement to paint the wall behind the bookcases a deep berry color, and after that dried and the kids were in bed we loaded their books back into the shelves and hoped that this change of situation wouldn't cause them to freak out upon discovery.

No, the next morning as I climbed the stairs to get them up for school, this is what I found:

My little early riser had been silent as a mouse (she's usually yelling HI HOW'RE YOU HI HI HI down the stairs or just coming into our room and screaming until we pull her up into bed with us after terrorizing her brother awake and into a horrendous mood) reading her books on the half-built window seat. We hadn't even explained this whole get-up to them because it wasn't finished yet, but apparently they needed no clarification.

What's been great is that every night now, right after their baths they run to the window seat and scramble up, asking us to read books to them and reading them along with us and we sit there as a family and read together, no TVs or phones or computers stealing anyone's attention. Just us, the kids, and the board books lovingly inscribed to our children by our friends and family back when they were still just feti.

This is exactly, exactly, what I'd hoped for. I'm getting verklempt even talking about it now. This was exactly what I'd dreamed it would be for us, this communal space to share a love of reading and togetherness without all the extra-ness of society cutting in. And it wasn't even finished yet.

So our window seat project has already exceeded our expectations of usefulness and importance in our daily lives. 

Now we just have to make it pretty.

We are being reimbursed for our use of PureBond products, however all opinions and viewpoints are strictly our own.