Crazy Adventures

Remember these chairs that I redid and put in my scrapbook room? Well they are the inspiration for this super crazy dirty adventure.

When we were looking for chairs that I could redo and make them cute it was pretty hard to find. We went to several stores and finally did find a couple that worked great, but Steve remembers how hard we had to look. He is always looking at online auctions and this last Wednesday was no different. When I got home from work he showed me several pictures of an online estate sale, this being one of the pictures.

Pretty cool picture, kind of tempting remembering how we had a hard time finding the chairs for the room that I just redid. I called Ashley and sent her a picture and she said cool. Steve said okay how much should I bid? He put in a fairly low bid and we didn't really think to much else about it. Thursday night came and we were thinking no way, someone else will bid on it, we watched it starting with 1 hour and 20 minutes. We checked it every 15 or so minutes and nobody put in another bid, I still thought no way someone will put a bid in at the last minute, I don't really need those chairs. Well at one minute no one else had bid so I knew that they were ours. Friday came and off we went to collect our treasures. This is what we found:

A few surprises

I was pretty excited initially and thought it was cool, but as the loading went on and on I was loosing my excitement. It was so dirty and disgusting. We had a lot of stuff to load and didn't think that we were going to be able to get it all in one trip. A lot of stuff can be shoved into a grain silo. I told Steve no way we had to somehow find a way for it to all fit. We we did manage to fit it all in on load this is what it looked like

We ended up breaking everything that wasn't worth anything up into little pieces so that we could fit it all. We had the trailer and pickup loaded up. We got a lot of stares as we were driving home. It was a lot of fun to go through everything and think of the potential of what could be done with it. You can buy a lot of stuff for a little bit of money in this case. The good news is that we did find some pretty cool things. We found a chair that will work for Ashley classroom and I have several others that are in good shape. We have the four glass doors that are cool looking and in good shape. This is what is left of the original picture. I don't need most of this stuff so I am going to try and sell it, including the doors. (If you know of anyone interested let them know, I will be making some great deals)

Craft room Desk

Sorry it has taken me so long to finish up the post on my scrapbook room. The last thing I wanted to show was the desk. It actually turned out a little different that what we had originally planned to do but it turned out better. I wanted the desk to go on one wall, the one before wrapped around onto two walls but I didn't love it and felt like it took up to much room. I think Steve still wishes that we went on two walls but I love that it is just all on one. A couple of years ago my friend redid her scrapbook room and she had these drawer sets from Pottery Barn and she was getting rid of them so I asked her if I could have them. She was great with giving them to me all I had to do was go and pick them up. There are three of them and they just all sat together against my wall so they pretty much were the inspiration to how I wanted the desk to look.

We lined them up and it gave us a lot of chair space and working space with the three of them, but I had a major problem, I didn't have any way to store 12 X 12 paper. The drawers in the Pottery barn set were actually legal size drawers. We had one drawer from cropper hopper and then a couple of cubby hole boxes from them as well. As you can see from the above picture I had Steve take the cropper hopper boxes and he made another 12X12 drawer for the paper, and then added a small cubby hole to hold paper on top of that so that it was the right size for the top to set on. He also add a small cubby to the already made drawer and then I had the base of my desk done.

It turned out really cool. We didn't really want to wait on Alan to build us a top and we didn't really want it out of plain white board wood so we went to Lowe's and bought the counter top already done. We anchored it on to our drawers and we were done.

One last thing that I did was make these painted mason jars, I have loved how they look so I thought I would give it a try. They were a little harder to do than I thought they would be.

I painted them with a couple of coats of paint and then let them dry over night. I then took sand paper and distressed the, which was the hard part, I had to try a finger nail file but what really worked the best was a 100 grit sandpaper. They work great to hold all of my colored pens and pencils.

Classroom Makeover--Reveal

At the end of the school year, I was thinking about changing my classroom up a little bit. It's been relatively the same for a couple years I felt like I wanted something a little different. I love the combination of turquoise and lime green, and I would be able to use quite a bit of the things I already had. So, I went shopping---in JUNE. (Impressed with myself that I was thinking about this so early in the year). I found some great stuff--really cute baskets--which were my biggest expense, but I {love} them! I went into school about the middle of July and put my classroom together--I figure I spend a lot of time in this room, so it should be something that I like. I really like how it turned out.

Hanging on the door. I've been obsessed with turquoise for a while. Recently obsessed with chevron.

 

This is my whiteboard--which doesn't get as much use now that I have a big screen TV--so the big black squares will have posters we make as  a class hanging from them...Chevron border:)

 

My Reading Corner---LOVE it.

I added a green ruffle to the curtains. The rug is from IKEA, recovered some pillow....forgot to get that orange frame painted..haha---I think it's the only think not turquoise or green in the entire room.

 

I recovered my wooden Read letters. This is the third time I've redone them--I don't think they'll make it through another round.

My new baskets--seriously--there was not way I could pass these up.

 

Another view of the Reading Corner

Some small details throughout the room.

Clothespins covered with washi tape to hold student work.

My paint cans that hold supplies. I love these because I don't have to see the mess inside.

Small table, with post-its, markers, cleaning cloth for iPads.

This was a Hobby Lobby find. I had to paint the pedestal turquoise--but it is SOO cool.

 

This is above sink area. I get so many compliments on that globe.

I have to give credit to my brother-in-law for this bulletin board. Every year we have a school-wide theme. (which can get kinda old). This year it is BE.... I had an idea, but it wasn't going to work. And...back to school night was last week. Well...I was beyond stressed--and he pulled through for me. He went and found this real chalkboard at the thrift store and wrote all the math on it. Then, he came and hung it for me. I think it turned out pretty cool.

 

WOW! That was a lot of pictures--but that's my classroom. It looks so much better in person. Now, I just need my students to come--tomorrow.