Our New Homeschool Space

My house has been a bit of a puzzle to work out since we moved here. It can be tough moving from one house to another, almost like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Nothing fits together the way it used to. 

My current home has some things we love about it: huge bedroom closets, tall ceilings, and a large living room.

But two things have been driving me nuts about it:

-The lack of closets and storage on the main floor. Sure there are closets galore upstairs, but other than the coat closet, there are no other storage places on the main level. This has made storing things like play-doh, craft supplies, coloring supplies, and homeschool items a bit tough unless I want to be running up and down the stairs all day (which is an option, but certainly not ideal).

-There is a weird room in the front of the house. As soon as you walk into the house, there is a small room that I believe was intended to be a dining room, but we used as a sort of small sitting area until now.

This is what that front room looked like when we moved in (even they didn’t know what to do with it):

We moved in, repainted it, and used it as a small living room: 

I enjoyed it for a morning coffee, but it was mostly ignored. 

As for all the things I was struggling to store, I’d tried so many different ways of organizing, storage pieces, etc., and nothing seemed to work well. I finally sat down and put together a plan. What I needed versus what I had.

I realized I needed some sort of large storage cabinet to store the items that were floating around my downstairs, and preferably something with drawers so it wasn’t all open storage (I had a cube-style storage shelf I tried that I found hard to keep organized). I found my ideal shelving at IKEA, but decided I didn’t want to spend $1,000. 

Sooooooo I decided to transform that front room into a craft/homeschool space on the cheap. 

Here are some “before” photos:

I started looking for a shelving/storage unit that would work for storage in this room. I found this beauty on Facebook for $40

My husband was not thrilled with the purchase. He thought it was not even worth what we paid for it, but I promised him I had plans for it. 

Over the course of several weeks I slowly (slloooooooooowwwwwwwwly) got the unit painted. I used a one-step chalk paint that wouldn’t require me to prime or sand. I did clean it well with a deglosser. In hindsight I wish I had primed it, because it took more paint than I would have preferred to cover up the dark wood.

All things considered, the paint worked well, and adhered well without sanding or priming. I put on two layers of polyacrylic to protect it.

Then I ordered some hardware for $23 total from

Wayfair. I purchased something that would cover up the holes that were used as drawer pulls before. 

And in the end, after a total investment of about $100, this is what I had. 

It is still not the $1,000 IKEA unit, but I’ve been able to store all of our homeschool stuff, preschool crafts and projects for the twins, educational games, and coloring and craft supplies. I already had that small yellow shelf where I am keeping our printer and some other office/craft items. 

I purchased some new curtains 2nd hand on Facebook marketplace 

And notice the light in the middle of the room with no glass shades? If you follow my Instagram (send me a follow request @mycornerofjoy), you may have seen that I purchased that new light fixture at the Habitat for Humanity REstore for $15. It had these shades on it, and I considered replacing them for a bit, but decided to just keep them as-is....

Until my husband accidentally dropped the old light fixture onto this new light fixture and broke all of the glass on both (Ahhh!). 

So my $15 light fixture became a $50 light fixture after I ordered new glass shades for it. I’m happy how it turned out though!

After going back and forth, we decided to use a table and chairs we already have that was in our basement. It needs to be refinished, which I don’t have much time for right now, but eventually I will get to it. 

We were close to donating this dining set, but I was having a hard time parting with it because that table has 3 leaves! It will be perfect for our family as it grows. Someday I may purchase some new chairs to go with it, but for now we decided to just go with it how it is in this space. 

So here it is! Our new front room/homeschool space!

This room just goes to show: it doesn’t take much money to make a big difference! I spent only $165 total making this room function and look better, including a new light fixture. Sometimes it just takes figuring out how to make something work that isn’t ideal, or using nooks and crannies of time in your day to transform an ugly shelving unit into what you want.

I have already seen a reduction in clutter in other areas of the house, and I’m so happy this front room is finally getting regular use. My girls spend most of their day in this room now playing, coloring, and creating. I’m excited to begin teaching kindergarten this fall in such a bright and cheerful space.