School Room Before

I absolutely hate Windows Live Photo galleries—it is easy to blog from, but when you have to go back and find a picture, it is darn near impossible!!  I have come up with a system that works a lot of the time, but not always and it really frustrates me!!  So, I try to get them on the blog as soon as possible so I don’t lose them…  I did find all the before pictures of the school room, but haven’t found the in progress and after pics yet.

I do want to get this on here so more time doesn’t pass and we forget about it.  Mike even said the other day he completely forgot we had done this room (he didn’t do much in here which is probably why—for the most part this was me and the girls—he did do the “flooring” in the window seat though, and some trim work).  This room was key to the way this house functioned for us though, and now that it is done, I can’t imagine life without it  LOL!  We spend so much time in here—not just for school either.  Even when the girls have sleepovers, I have been amazed at how much time they spend in here. 

This was right after we moved in and I had to get all the furniture into the center of the room so the painting could begin.  This room was so DARK!!  Even in the middle of the day, it was like a dungeon!

The people before us used this room for storage and had a sheet stapled around that big window.  Just getting that sheet down made a huge difference!

Inside the window seat area—you can see a tad bit of the wall in the room.  The room itself is yellow with white trim, and the windowseat area got blue.

Hard to tell fully, but the floor in this nook was never finished and was just subflooring.

This has been a favorite spot since moving in!  I knew it would be, I mean what kid can resist a wonderful window seat?  Every morning I come down and get my coffee and water and sit in here to do my reading and have my quiet time.  Then Clara comes down and joins me and curls up in the window seat (where she is right now :)  For school, Lucy sits at the desk with me, or at the table (or goes into another room if we are making too much noise), and Clara sits in the window seat (above, she is doing her math).  She is close enough to me to help.  I have actually reorganized it and put the reading/spelling station in the window seat now!! 

I had originally thought we would make a cushion to go all across the whole seat (which is actually huge!!).  We threw the bed the girls made  for Bella, that she doesn’t use, in the seat and that works perfectly.  I no longer want a full cushion—I love the flexibility of this set up, and have actually put some drawers and an area behind me in the nook as a table top area that works better than I could have imagined!!  I need to get pictures of my new set up. 

Here is the room when the previous owners had the house.  They kept the door shut and it was storage, and the pool room.

There’s the sheet on the window.

This is where they would come in and out for the pool, and the carpeting showed the proof of that.  We were thrilled that it came right up and cleaned beautifully though.  We actually don’t use this door much.  Now, where that plant was, there is a huge cat condo  :)

We removed the door (which is now outside on the patio painted as a chalk board), but I’m thinking of putting it back up—but I will have to switch it to swing on the other side.  I have to decide if it is worth doing that or not.