School & Craft Room Makeover

When our school year wrapped up in mid-May, I decided to redo my homeschool and crafting room. I challenged myself to keep the cost way down while giving it a great look. We'll get to the cost at the end of this post.

When we moved into this house, I didn't know what I wanted this room to look like. I was busy with sewing and school so all that mattered was that we could do those things. Now that I don't have a sewing business anymore, rather, a business that is more a hodge podge of crafts and fixing up things, it didn't seem right to have a large part of the room taken up by sewing machines while not having much room to do what I needed to do.

This project rapidly grew into a huge makeover that took much longer than anticipated. I have a few finishing touches left, but I am going to share some of the project now because I am so excited to finally be just about finished!

A few of the "smaller" projects that made up the final product:

- painting the walls to match the rest of the main areas of the house

- ripping out the carpet

- staining the concrete

- taking apart an Ikea "Billy" bookcase I had, reconfiguring it with brackets as shelves mounted on the wall

- spray painting two metal filing cabinets I found on Craigslist

- using the filing cabinets to make a built-in desk along one wall with three desk stations - one for each girl on either end and one in the middle for me & my computer

- bunting made from scrapbook paper & string, hung with cup hooks from the ceiling

- redoing the pedestal table into a counter height worktable with storage (will go into more detail in my next blog post!)


Here's a close up of the computer. I purchased a wall mount for the screen to get it off the desk. I also drilled a 2" hole in the desk & slipped in a plastic cable grommet. I actually did this at all three desk stations, so we can all hide our cords.

The floor was a huge project. Huge. I couldn't have done it without my husband! We learned a LOT. It was still a better option for us than tile or wood, etc... and far less expensive.

We used Behr Concrete Floor Stain, custom mixed to get a chocolate brown color to match the wood in the rest of the house. I have mixed feelings about the results, but in the end it was an inexpensive solution that turned out decently.

Here's the completed table, which I will explain in my next blog post.

As I said, I tried to keep the cost down by using things I already had, building things ourselves, and looking for bargains.

I kept a tally of everything I had to buy (except for a few incidentals, such as nails, paintbrushes & caulk), and the grand total came to...

Just under $500. This was before I sold several items from the room that I didn't use anymore, which brought in almost $300! So the net cost of this project was just a little over $200.