Working on the School Room... Chalkboard Wall!

When we first moved in, I had to get the school room up and going quickly.  We are blessed to have two rooms in the front of our house designated for school.  One is the dining room; the other an office.  We do school in what should be the dining room.  I'm just not a dining room kind of a gal, and we have a big table in there in case we need it for a family function.  After doing school in the kitchen for a couple years, I learned that it wasn't my preference.  Sure, sometimes the kids sit at the counter while I'm doing something in the kitchen, and I help them with a worksheet, but we don't have to clear all of our school stuff before every meal.  We can leave it where it is and then come back to it after lunch.  Also, after certain school days (you know, THOSE days), I just want to leave it all there, a complete mess... walk away from it.  And it's nice to be able to do that.  

Here is how phase one of the school room looked.  This was after I cleaned it out one night.  After our crazy fall, it had looked like this.

Like a tornado had come through.

There's a little closet in there too.  It has most of our art supplies in it.  This was a before and after.  Actually, right now, it looks more like the picture on the left.  We've been in project mode and it's been neglected.

Here is the wall before.  

We obviously had moved the books out.

My dad was nice enough to do the painting for us.  It took 3 coats, and as he said, black paint with white borders is not very forgiving.  He bought the most expensive tape and it worked like a charm.  His borders were nearly perfect.

I guess there's no turning back at this point.

Samuel got to put the finishing touches on the wall.

And the first coat is on.

As a side note, I debated using colored chalkboard paint.  A friend encouraged me not to, and I'm happy with the decision.  There's something classic about black chalkboards.

You had to wait three days and then color the whole thing with chalk... twice.

The floor was a chalky mess, but it actually didn't take that long.

Don't you remember loving to write on the board?

And there you have it.  Now I have a place to jot things up there as we are learning them.  

And keep passages of Scripture I want us to memorize. 

If I can ever make it to the fabric store, I want to make bunting to hang across the top.  I look forward to doing it, but the time... oh the time, it escapes me.   For right now, it's nice to have this messy project done.  Now we are working on doing shelving in the office to hold all of those books.  I made a trip to Ikea and picked up a *few* things for that project.

I'll keep you posted.