school room pictures

There have been some House Beautiful school room pictures floating around the blogs lately. This is not one of them. :) However, I think we did a great job remodeling our little room if I do say so myself.



The closet "before".

Maria painting the closet. Yeah, she put the paint on her nose on purpose. Ham it up, girl.

Ack! Giant pile of junk!
I got rid of five bags of stuff, and it's all organized and pretty now. I tried to take "after" closet pictures, and my camera battery gave up. I'll take some when we start school in a couple of weeks.

Here's that terrible bit of unfinished floor I was telling you about.

And this coffee table...I've almost thrown this table out so many times. John brought this table to the marriage. It is incredibly sturdy and was probably very expensive new, but the surface was in rough shape and it looked very dated. I held on to it because of the sturdiness factor. Furniture that will withstand the abuse of four kids is hard to come by.

Maria working on the floor...the lighting throws off the pictures certain times of the day. Some of these are pretty blurry.

Here's the after pictures of this area, including the table. I'm glad I saved it now! It will be our "seasons and liturgical year" table. Those shelves under the window will hold Jack's workboxes when school starts.





This came out too dark too. This wall is perpendicular to that refinished floor section. The dresser on the left was Jack and Tess's baby dresser. I thought it would look good in here and give some needed school storage. That messy bookcase to the right holds our school books. This area is still in progress. John is taking the kids out for the day next week so that I can finish organizing our school stuff.


Here's the third wall. You can see those messy school shelves to the left. Jack's train table is here, and I plan to hang the dry erase board on this wall. Trains and tracks live in one of the drawers under the table, and the other drawer holds cars and other vehicles.

Even Jack got to paint!


The same wall, after...that's our new timeline, by the way, that is wrapping around the room. Maria and I will be filling it in over the next couple of years. That's the top of the futon. I love having a futon in this room. Everyone likes to get comfy and read on it, and it makes a good guest bed when we need one. There are a couple of small shelves at the side of the futon there. Those are going to be used to hold a few toys at a time. The rest live in the closet.

If I could make one big change, it would be to have more open floor space in this room. I can't make that happen without getting rid of the futon though. Future plans include losing the plastic preschool table and replacing it with a wooden one, finishing the trim work, and painting the doors.

Kain-isms

While making up signs for playing store...

"Aunt Mel, how do you spell 'only'? As in, 'only $19.95'?"

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"This rock is really, really ancient. I think it's from the '70's."


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"Aunt Mel, what kinds of foods were available back in the old days when you were a kid?"

How day 3 went....

HELP!

I'm so *tired* of painting!

We finished the walls yesterday, and the floor...not until 10:30 last night though. I'm beat. And I'm not done. I have to varnish the floor several times and let it dry for at least 72 hours, then move everything back into place. I don't think I'm doing much today though. I have several errands to run, and I'm not going to kill myself trying to finish the varnishing today.

How day 2 went....

---Yesterday we painted fern green on the top 1/3 of the walls. This involved circling the entire room with a measuring tape, a level, and a pencil. I had some panicky second thoughts about the color. It's pretty bold. But I do like it after all. Green is so relaxing and calming.

---Painting the closet was tricky. It has this wide shelf all around it that makes it impossible to reach parts of the wall. I had Maria climb up on the shelf and get it for me. :)

---These things aren't all they are cracked up to be. I found them difficult to use and the coverage was poor and needed two, even three coats in places. A plain old paintbrush worked better. But that room has vaulted ceilings, and there was no other way to get up that high.

---After the littles were in bed, I primed the floor and also a coffee table I've been wanting to repaint. Primer stinks. My whole house reeks, and I still have it all over my hands.

---The kids have had enough. Jack and Kain are fighting all the time, Jack keeps climbing the baby gate to get into the room which freaks me out because the outlet covers are off of everything, and even Tess is getting irritated about being separated from me for big chunks of time. I'm remembering why I almost never do any big projects like this anymore.

---But we are almost done! Today we will put on the yellow paint. That will be easier because it will all be reachable without ladders and extension poles. Then comes the enormous job of reorganizing everything. Yikes.

How day 1 went...

Phew. Long day yesterday.

I got everything done, except for emptying the closet. I'm doing that first thing this morning.

Unexpected speedbumps---

--it was very tedious to scooch around the perimeter of the room with a ladder to stretch up high with the swiffer and get cobwebs all around the vaulted ceilings. Especially since it hadn't been done in...well, a really long time. Yuck.

--I ran out of spackle. Twice. Here's the issue. This house used to belong to a very creative do-it-yourselfer. He added this big room onto the back of the house. It's supposed to be a master bedroom, but we use it as our school room. Its got two kinds of flooring in there. I'm not sure why. The whole house, even the bathrooms, were carpeted when we bought the house, with great old hardwood floors underneath. So we didn't find this issue until we tore up all the carpet. Two-thirds of the floor is great old hardwood. The remaining third is ugly plywood subflooring. And there's a crack between the two floors, a crack that is half an inch wide in places. I was filling that all in with spackle because I'm going to paint that part of the floor. It's my brilliant solution to disguise the ugly plywood. If that doesn't work, then I guess I'll get a big area rug to throw on there.

--Jack was Not Happy about all the renovating. He very anxiously followed me around all day yesterday asking me tons of questions about what I was doing, where I was putting his stuff, etc. He got upset when I started shoving all the furniture to the center of the room. And he got really upset when I took all his trains off the train table and put them in a box. They GO on the train table!

Unexpected helps-

--Maria. The girl spackled her brains out yesterday. She is my right hand. She loves these kinds of projects, and she's been a great help.

--Tess. She was very cooperative and happily played the day away.

Notice I didn't mention Kain. He's been...neutral. Not a hindrance to progress, but not as helpful with entertaining Jack as I might have hoped.

Ok, onward! To the closet!

The plan for today

This week is.....

INSERT DRUMROLL HERE

...clean/organize/paint the schoolroom week!

Ta-da!

So, here's the issue. Our schoolroom/playroom...I never know what to call it. Learning room sounds a bit pretentious. Anyway. It is junkity junk junked out. It is such a mess, especially the big walk-in closet I use for storage. It also has never been painted, not by me anyway, and the dirty white walls have got to go. So, today, I begin work. The big kids are on little kid detail this week. I've promised them rollicking good times for the rest of July if they will help me out this week. I'd like to say I managed to clear my schedule for the week, but that's not entirely true. So I may not be sleeping. Here's the plan though-

Today- Clean up the room and move last year's school books out. Push all the furniture to the middle. Clean up and repair the walls. Repair the part of the floor I am working on. Empty closet and do the same in there. We have a doctor's appointment today, so that will probably be enough, but if Tess cooperates tonight I may do some purging and organizing of the closet contents.

Tuesday- Tarp everything. Sand repaired areas and mark line around walls to separate colors. Paint first color on upper third of the wall, two coats. We may go to the library on this day. This is a lighter day of basically waiting for the paint to dry. I may do some more organizing of the closet junk if I can.

Wednesday- We are meeting friends at a local park early in the day. After lunch, I'll paint the second color on the bottom 2/3rds of the wall. two coats. I'll pull up the carpet in the closet (it's already pulled up in the room itself). Then I'll move stuff off the area of the floor that is being refinished and prime it.

Thursday- We will be gone all day. I have to go to social security for Kain, he has a therapy appointment, we have a lunch date with another family, and then I need to stop by the church for a VBS meeting. This will be good...it'll give the closet a chance to dry out really well before I put stuff in it. I would like to put the first color of paint on the floor though. Two coats.

Friday- Finish organizing the closet stuff and put it all away. Move furniture back into place as best I can considering I need to leave clear the floor in progress. Put timeline and such on the walls. Finish painting said floor, and put first coat of varnish on it before going to bed.

Over the weekend- That's pretty much it, I'll just need to finish varnishing the floor. I want at least three coats of varnish. Then it needs to dry for something like 3 days before we can move furniture back on it. So I won't be *all* done until the middle of next week I guess.

Tess doesn't sleep well without me right now, so I really don't know if I'll be able to stay up late to work on stuff or not. I'm going to try. I really want to get this done this week. I *need* to get this done. Closing the playroom is a big deal. And I'm refinishing part of the floor, and it needs to be done in a certain time frame and have plenty of time to dry before we can move back in. I don't want this project to take over the whole of our summer break. So I am going to suck it up and get it done, and hopefully the kids will do the same.

In the meantime, here's a couple more videos to share. These are beach cuteness. We went to Destin for a week in May to visit my in-laws. Go look and smile!

Oh, and excuse the speedo on Jack. It's actually a swim diaper of Tess's. We had an issue with his bathing suit while we were gone, and so this was my solution. It's very European, yes? Ah well,,,he's only four.

Jack and Tess demolish sand castles

Tess doesn't eat seaweed after all.

Ok, off to work!

I found my camera cable!!! Huzzah!

And now you will be subjected to a barrage of photographs. Don't worry, I'll do it a little at a time. Posting them all here makes it easier for me,,,I can order copies of all the pics on my blog very easily, one click!

But today,,,just a short film.

Jack plays Ode to Joy.
(click on the title to watch.

I told ya'll the boy was talented.