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.