The Classroom

One of the major reasons we decided upon this house was the excellent back room off of the kitchen.  It was perfect for a classroom!  I can work in the kitchen and see what's going on because of the pass through and I have plenty of room for all of my bookshelves (and I can't seem to stop myself from adding more and more books, thus needing more and more bookshelves.  I mean who can turn down a good book?  Books are awesome... but I digress) and art supplies (something else I have tons and tons of... I am a bit of a hoarder of all things that I think I can make into something later).  I can also gate off the entry and keep the baby contained.  I have yet to work my make-over magic on the walls, but who doesn't love wood paneling?  ok... me, I don't love wood paneling!  For now, my strategy is to plaster the walls with posters, art work, bulletin boards and teaching aids... and also the windows... because there's not enough wall for all of the cool stuff I want to hang up.  Hmmmm.... the ceiling is empty.....

You may recognize the file cabinet in the corner.  It was a fun refinish job and is now full of art supplies.  The white bookshelves were cobbled together from one 10 foot tall unit intended for the garage.  We found someone giving away a garage full of these shelves on craigslist and are using them in several places.  I basically cut the sides of one shelf into 3 pieces and used some small scraps to make braces for the tops.  After attaching them all together the whole thing wanted to fold over and twist apart so I had to add a back to the center section.  I happened to have a scrap of 1/4 inch plywood laying about that did the job.  Actually, there is very little in this picture that was not a hand-me-down, free-find, cheap used treasure, or curbside rescue... Even some of the technology pieces!

The File Cabinet

When we moved into our new home there was an old wooden file cabinet in the garage filled with random garage junk.  I knew that it needed to be my new art supply cabinet, but it needed some help first.  We cleaned out all of the drawers, but when we tried to move it we discovered that it was coming apart on the bottom.  Boo!  So I pulled out all of the drawers and used some scrap lumber to strengthen the structure.  I also removed an ugly locking mechanism and filled some holes.

Next, I set to work on the drawers.  They had some sort of folder locks that slid along a rail that had been pushed all of the way back.  While moving these around to clean them up I discovered something quite unexpected wedged between the panels.

Woah... I wonder how long THAT has been in there....

At any rate, after cleaning the whole thing up I took it out to the back porch for a good sanding and painted the whole thing light grey (with some paint that I had picked up at the local reuse center for free).  I decided to do another project with a chevron pattern.  This time I created a template the exact size of each drawer front on some paper.  Using a graphite transfer method I drew the pattern on each drawer front.  Basically, I scribbled on the back of where the lines were with a pencil and then traced over the lines on the front... essentially like using carbon paper.  I hand painted the chevron in with white paint.  Lastly, a little distressing with the sander.

Now it looked great on the outside!  The inside, however, wasn't designed to hold objects so the bottoms of the drawers were not solid.  No big deal!  I cut some foamcore to the exact size of the drawer bottoms and covered the pieces with dollar store contact paper. Viola!  Now it is filled up with art goodies and ready for use!