We have a pretty large playroom upstairs, and we had ds's bathroom have doors to both his bedroom and the playroom (one is a pocket door.) This made sense for us for many reasons. Right now, the playroom is more 12 year old ds's domain....it has his basketball goal, his video games, all his boy stuff. When his friends come over, that is where they hang out. I am glad they use ds's bathroom, with his slate-colored tile! Wouldn't want them using dd's pretty white bath, or my powder room! :) Dd (9) likes playing in her room with her friends, so they use her bath. Another reason we gave the playroom access to a bath is that it could function as a secondary master if (waaaayyyy in the future) we ever sold it and the family who bought it wanted to sleep upstairs with small children. I planned a really big storage closet in there that could be re-configured into a clothes closet.

boopadaboo, for sure there is no rush on their own rooms. All our kids have slept mostly with us for a few years except #5. She does not sleep well with us (took awhile for me to figure this out) so she is mostly in her crib. But as others have said, most kids do not spend tons of time in their rooms, esp if you live in a 2 story. I also think room sharing is fine-- or it better be because most of my kids have to share. :) My objection with the original room was more of a worry of the future, LOL, that it seemed like it was trying to appeal to adults. Sometimes children are seen as small adults (and then unrealistic expectations are set). A room does not have to be garish to appeal to children-- on the contrary. I am assuming unfairly, however, that these parents will view the child as anything other than a child. I' m still worried about that mirror, though.

Yes MamaGoose that is a wonderful thought provoking image. You and LL have been rung through the mill. I also had a few issues with medications for Joe. This is when I started to keep a detailed journal. Some thing that could not just be heard from me but written so the doctors and nurses would see I was keeping details and when he was told to take this or that med is showed up in his food journal as barfing his guts out. Stop the meds he was better. And even though these meds were supposed to keep him from getting sick they did not work that way. I was also very frustrated on the way they were taking care of him in the hospital. His skin was horrible and his toe nails were awful. No one even bothered to look at his feet but me. Interesting the first thing the home health nurse looked at was his feet and she was pleased I had cared for them She said it is common in hospital to neglect the feet. And when they brought him food they did not open the container even after notes taped to the tray and written on his board in the room. I would get there and everything closed up. He could not open the containers so he would go hungry. He was too out of it to ask. I had to spoon feed him for a couple weeks after we got home. Sometimes he fell back to sleep eating half a cup of custard. LBD sounds like a horrible disease. Spiders coming from the ceiling is more than enough to make a person go over the edge. Feeling so bad for your and and Hubby. MG and LL. We did get some sun. We canceled the dentist appointment yesterday AM. too much snow and emergency weather alerts saying stay off the roads. I think we got 5 or 6 inches of snow but at some point in the night there was a bit of rain so it laid down an ice slick under the snow. This morning we woke to sun and about 13 degrees. We did breakfast then out to put the snow plow on the ranger. Joe had about half of it done then I went out to help him do the rest. I know he wanted to do it all by himself but it is good for me to refresh my brain on how it goes on and comes off. Then I went off to the post office and Joe plowed the driveway. LOL He even plowed a swath across the back yard for the kitties to travel on their adventures.

If they are 9 and 12, do they still need a playroom? Is that really more of a space for doing homework? Perhaps part of that space could be used for one of the bathrooms. I have one boy and one girl, and in our previous house (sold after they were both out of college) they each had their own bathrooms. It was great that they could both get ready for school at the same time without getting in each other's ways. And no teenage girl wants to share her hygiene space with a boy.