Home Tour: Our Bonus Room – Guest Room, Theater Room and Playroom All in One!

A homemade built-in murphy bed, custom made movie screen, play table with toys and a full bathroom allows our bonus room for three uses:  Guest room, theater room and play room all in one!

(The photos in this post are animated .gif photos, so they should switch back and forth continuously.)

Once in a while I like to give you a sneak peek into our home.  We bought it almost two years ago (in January) and have made many changes to make it just right for us.  We have a ways to go, but it has already come a long way into fitting our lifestyle.

Our house is three bedrooms with an upstairs bonus room that includes a full bath.  Since the boys take up two of the bedrooms and we, of course, have the master bedroom, we wanted to create a space that is a comfortable guest room for friends and family who visit.  The bonus room is perfect for our vision since it has a full bathroom, but we also want to use it for a playroom and theater room.

Do you know what a murphy bed is?  It’s a wall bed that pulls down when you need to sleep and folds up to store in the wall when you need the space in the room.  A murphy bed was the answer for us, but they can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000!  Not exactly in our budget.  So Ben decided he could save us money and build one for around $300.

Ben may be a professor of Biblical studies and a very academic man, but he is also extremely handy with his hands.  In the last four years or so, he has proven to be quite the resourceful guy when it comes to house projects.  If there’s a problem or challenge, he figures it out.  I have to say, I’ve been totally impressed.

He’s built up quite the workshop in our garage, so when it came time to build a murphy bed, he was ready.  He researched plans and bought hardware then took a few weeks to build the frame and built-in shelving. We bought the mattress from Sam’s Club (a comfy foam one) and simple quilt and pillows from Home Goods.

We’ve had this bed now for almost a year.  It stays folded up into the wall until we have overnight guests.  For every day use, it’s a playroom for the kids with a KidKraft play table and chairs I loooove from Amazon, and a theater screen that plays movies and video games.  We are waiting to travel to an IKEA store to buy toy storage baskets, then Ben will build shelves to hold those, as well.  (The cedar chest pictured under the movie screen is no longer there. We sold it.)

The movie screen is painted on the wall with special theater screen paint.  Ben built the frame around it with leftover wood that was in our garage when we bought the house!

We absolutely love our useful space in the bonus room.  This is the only room upstairs, and I’m so grateful it has a full bathroom, too, so that guests can have their private shower and toilet.  Every Wednesday, my friend who has seven kids (yes, SEVEN!) comes over after our Mom2Mom study at church, and her teenaged daughter watches all the kids in the bonus room while they play and my friend and I go out for girl time.  This space is perfect for them!  The kids watch a movie, or play video games and some play with the building toys or color.  Fun for all!

Do you have a room in your house that has multiple uses?  How have you made the most of YOUR space?