Improving Spaces

The big reveal!  Or at least an attempt at it!  The work room we just renovated is pretty large and oddly sized so it is hard to figure out how to best take pictures.  The room is sort of in 'zones.'  Above is the craft zone. This is an old particle board armoire that K and I used to use for clothing about 15 years back.  With wire shelving and painted the same cheery red as our front hall, it is a great way to store the craft supplies. There are bins that were repurposed from a toy storage set up that the kids no longer use and two bulletin boards were added to the side.

 In the second shot you can see "my" zone.  I finally have a really functional computer center.  I have two lovely shelves (also in the same cheery red to carry the color punch through the room.  These are mounted on a door we do not ever open.  In a les cost concious world we would remove the door and dry wall it but this is the save a penny version not "This old house!" LOL  Everything I need for correspondence and bill paying and filing is at my fingertips and it is so so easy to keep neat.  Behind my area starts the homeschool area with the big bulleten board for kid art.

 This shot gives a good view of the color we painted the paneling.  I call it barely yellow, but the color on the can says "full moon."  It is such a wonderful change from the totally dark floor to ceiling paneling we had before.It is scrubbable paint and it also covered the paneling beautifully with just two coats and a coat of primer. We did not fill in the grooves of the paneling and the result is somewhat reminiscent of bead board.  In the corner is a bookcase we got surprisingly inexpensively and it stores all the homeschool curriculums for the kids. On top of it are 3 red knick knacks that we grouped there (things we all ready owned just relocated) to carry the accent color through the room.

KC's "new" homeschool desk.  This was my desk growing up so truly the only new thing here is that it is new to him and the light on it.  Lighting is still wonky in this room, so table lamps are important. The cool thing about this light (aside from the fact that it was not expensive) is that it also has a built in pencil holder.

I did not take a picture of the piece work area, which is also newly organized and takes up a smaller portion of the room.  I think that it probably always could have but we did not realize it.  Originally when we started doing piece work in this room, we had to have baby gates up to keep the littles safe. The gates came down a few years ago but it did not occur to us to look at the space in any way other than the way we had been using it before.  At some point (tax return time?)  I am looking to purchase a small laptop table for my wife. They are very inexpensive and I would also like a small but comfy chair for when we are teaching or reading to the kids.  I also have plans to repaint a few wooden tv tables that we have (have not exactly decided how yet) and use them as end tables. They would be helpful but easily folded up if the room needed more space for the piece work at a given time.