Home Tour: The School Room

When we were looking at homes to buy, we really only wanted a four bedroom home. We of course would purchase a three bedroom when it came down to it, but I knew I was going to be homeschooling Jay this year, and so it would have been ideal to have a fourth room to facilitate that, and for another child, or different things as our needs changed over the years. 

I remember driving down to look at this house for the first time and being a little sad that it only had three bedrooms. After seeing pictures online, I told Derek, "I hope this house has a magical extra room that just wasn't on the listing." Then we got there, and low and behold, an extra magical room was there indeed. 

Our home is a split level and so there are three living areas. The very upstairs has three bedrooms and two full baths. The main floor has our living room, dining room converted to playroom, and then our kitchen with the large eating area that now houses our large dining room table. The downstairs area has the laundry room, the access to our garage, and this bonus room that also has a half bath. Because there is no closet,  it's not technically a bedroom, but if we have a third child, I'll have no qualms about making a child live down here if sharing rooms isn't an option. Once I saw this room on the initial walk through, I instantly knew this was the place. We put in an offer that night, and had offer accepted the next morning. 

When school started for us on August 1st this room was really not put together at all. We had stolen a small bookshelf out of Jay's room to hold our books, we had a smaller black bookshelf from our old house holding all our craft supplies, and we had our calendar on the wall, and that was it. Luckily,  I had a birthday a few weeks in, and all I wanted to do with my birthday money from family was to make the rest of this room complete. I really pride myself on being able to transform rooms with a small budget, and still make a big impact. Everything in this room cost well under $150!

I had purchased the white bookshelf at Ikea for $25... and it's easily the best cheap tall bookshelf we've purchased in the last five years... and believe me, there have been many cheap bookshelves in our marriage. I also know that someone is going to question whether or not I have it properly anchored to the wall so my children don't die, and the answer is yes. 

When I was at The Home Depot getting paint and other things for Jay's bedroom, I saw these storage containers and knew they would be perfect for all of our craft supplies. Four of them came together in a pack for $3.98, so I got two packs, and they've been great for storing things just how I need them, and we even have two empty ones for future supplies and other items. 

Unrelated to the room tour, but I love seeing all our school books together on the shelf like this. If you want a further look into all the books we're using this year, check out my post about this year's curriculum. 

This bulletin board right here is what swiftly ended my Target Boycott. I was firmly on board with never shopping there ever again because I was prideful and cared about where I peed and what not, but my arm was twisted, they had the $10 bulletin board, and I'll put price over principle any day... and now we've been to Target a million times since then. The white bulletin board was from this necklace project a few years back, and the small red table and chairs were $15 at Ikea. 

I purchased the big calendar at the Target Dollar Spot for $3, and then I printed the weather and days of the week printables off here for the white bulletin board. The caterpillar number line was a printout from our Confession of a Homeschooler's K4 curriculum, and it's successfully taught Jay how to properly say the number thirteen, which we're all grateful for. 

This is the first time that I've had my own desk space in our entire marriage. We had a desk when we lived in Utah, but it was so small that you couldn't really work from it, and so it just became an extra place where we tossed things. I picked this up at Ikea for $25 and I love it. There isn't a drawer, which is one small drawback, but I have so much storage on the bookshelf, that I haven't really found myself missing it. The chair was a fabulous find at Target for $30 and it really made all my chair dreams come through. I love the fun pop of color, and how it gives a little modern vibe. This chair is going to be in all future Flamm homes. I love it.