Locker Makeover..Office Part 2

With my office I wanted a vintage, distressed look and knew lockers would be a perfect statement piece. Well, once I finally decided to start working, finding lockers was not an easy feat. My brother-in-law found a set at the local surplus store for a pretty good price. They were not what I had envisioned in my mind, but I was willing to go with it.

This is the locker....after it had been cleaned up a bit. It was actually in pretty good shape. I was not crazy about the cut out diamonds and it was missing the traditional locker tags. But, I wasn't going to be too picky.

I knew it was too big for my office. Something that tall in a small space would not look quite right, so we decided to cut it in half and use just half of it. So, after removing some doors, we cut it in half (meaning--Steve cut it in half). We really wanted to have two separate pieces, so we tried to be really precise in the cutting.

We opted to leave the legs on the bottom so it was raised. We had to add another leg because one was missing. Because we cut it in half, the top was now missing. To tie in with the rest of the office, we decided to put a stained wood block on the top. So the picture below shows the rough wood on top. I actually quite loved the original color of the locker before it was sanded down.

 Once it was sanded down, it was time to paint, but first we had to tape it off because we left the inside unpainted to provide a contrast as well as to maintain its authenticity.

After several coats of pain and the top stained, distressed, and attached...this is the final product.

I absolutely love how it turned out. And those diamonds I didn't love to start with give it a lot of character. It has a lot of storage...I'm still on the quest to find the perfect baskets to put inside each cubby. 

Office Projects... Part 1

Transitioning out of the classroom and into a office has been difficult this school year. I knew I wanted my office to be decorated just as cute as my classroom, but bright colors were not really appropriate for this setting. I also had a major problem....a very large burgundy/red wall. Now, a little background on me...i HaTe red!! Like, really hate red. I was told it would not be possible to have the red wall painted because the school district painter was already booked for the summer. I was not happy...and I dreaded my office because of it. I did not want to buy anything that would match red. So I put it off. And believe me, I let everyone know of my extreme dislike of this red wall :) Finally, I couldn't put it off any longer, and hauled all my stuff over. When I walked in, the secretary was grinning from ear to ear...."Let's go see your office!" The painter was able to squeeze my office into the schedule and I now have all cream walls. I was ecstatic...and was now ready to begin decorating.

Here are before pictures of the office---very BLAH---but beautiful neutral walls!

I wanted a large chalkboard, so that was my first project. First, we made a frame out of some wood that was laying around. The frame was made to fit a piece of wood that I had already made into a chalkboard.

 I was looking for a distressed, industrial look, so I need to "beat up" the frame. I grabbed some tools for distressing...screwdriver, hammer, screws. I roughed it up with the hammer and a screwdriver. Then I put a bunch of screws in a Ziplock bag and smacked the frame with the entire bag. I won't lie---I had a blast doing this. It made the perfect gouges and marks to make it look old.

 Then I stained it with a dark walnut color, which made all those marks show up even more.

I was in love with the finished project. So easy to complete, but it looks authentic.

Sock Monkey

Megan got a sewing machine for Christmas and really wanted to try sewing something. I am not a sewer at ALL. She has been taking FACS in school and seemed to really like the sewing part of it so we found this pattern on pinterest and decided it didn't look to hard.

First thing I told her to do was iron the sock, this is what she came back with, a hole in her sock! She melted the sock to the iron.

Not off to the best start but it did get better. We had to fix the sock and then we were ready to cut out the parts of the monkey and sew them together.

After it was traced on the sock Megan started the sewing. She liked this part but it was a little tricky because you sewed along the line that was drawn on the sock and then cut out the pieces.

After the sewing it was time to stuff the monkey and then sew each piece onto the monkey.

After it was finished I told Megan she needs to sew another one and do it better because now we know how to do. This where we found the pattern http://www.craftpassion.com/2012/04/how-to-sew-sock-monkey.html/2

Megan's Closet

Most of the closet for this room was already done. We made the closet organizer last year, we bought the drawers from ikea and then built everything around it. The big problem with this room was when we took the bed out we lost all of her storage, and she had a lot of stuff. It took us a long time to go through her stuff and get rid of a lot of it. It is pretty nice know with the baskets. The labels I found at TJ max, they chalkboard so she can change them up if she puts other things in the basket.

The second coolest thing in the room is the jewelry organizer. It is made from an old kitchen drawer, we ended up being really lucky because Eric was tearing out cabinet in a house and he had one the right size. We found the know at Hobby Lobby.

I can't take any credit for this one, Ashley made it. She painted the outside of the drawer grey and then the inside white. She had to distress it a lot on the inside. It is really cute.

Teen Bedroom redo

Megan has finally grown out of her bunk desk. We have loved having it and it has provided a ton of storage so I have been pretty reluctant to redo it and take the bed out of her room. This year she turned 13 and I figured that I should make the move and get her a new bed. Only problem was we couldn't just get a new bed, we had to do the entire bedroom. The first thing that we had to do was the ceiling. We have popcorn ceiling in our house so as we redo rooms, we have scrapped off the ceiling and made it smooth. Next up was the floor, we have a lot of wood floor sitting out in our garage so we went ahead and used it on her room. She had carpet in there that was absolutely disgusting.

After talking with Megan she told me she wanted her room to be pink and some blue. Well we really wanted it to be a teenage room so we went with Coral and turquoise. This is the material that we found at Hobby Lobby and used as our base colors.

The only other requirements for the room were a desk and a chair. The chair was a pretty specific kind, we used the desk that was in her room previously. I think that it turned out very nice and she loves it. She is always in her room now.

The main thing that I wanted was if she wanted to change the colors that it would be pretty easy. We went with a white bedspread and then had matching pillows made.

My mom made the coral pillow with material that we bought at Joann's. I really like it. Then we had her cover the lamp shade with the same material. The end table we found at a thrift store, bonus was that it was already painted the color we needed. The Wake up and Be Awesome sign was done by my mom and Ashley. It is out of pallet boards and then framed. The most awesome thing about the room is the light.

Mini chandelier spray painted with coral. I must admit here that I didn't want to put this in the room, but my decorating partner disagreed. It is Megan's favorite part. Because this post is so full of pictures come back again and I will have another post with her closet

Student Birthdays-Have a 'Scent'sational birthday

I always have a hard time figuring out what to give my students for their birthdays. With the new regulations regarding treats in the classroom, this year I had to really search for something that wasn't candy. I was shopping before school started and found these Scentos pens and markers. They were perfect--the kids love them. As a bonus, they were regularly only $1 and I got an extra teacher discount.

Have a Scentsational Birthday Printable

Young Women Monogram Block

We wanted to give the girls something for Evening in Excellence and I had seen a really cute idea on...Pinterest {of course}. You printed on burlap, so that had my attention because I love to try new things.

I followed the directions for printing on burlap here. It wasn't quite as easy as I had hoped it would be. The printing was actually pretty simple, but making an individualized letter for each girl was a little work intensive since the value words didn't fit exactly in each letter.

I painted the blocks of wood (5x7). Then mod podged the burlap on, hot glued the burlap rosette and they were finished. The girls really liked them because they were different.