Friday, February 28, 2014

Home School Room Makeover: Part 1



When we rented this house we knew we would have to do some work in several of the rooms.  The outside of the house is brick that is not covered with cement or stucco.  This is fine and pretty, except they did not seal it.  So when the rainy season comes, water seeps through the walls.  This causes the paint inside the house to peel off.  It might be ok to have a little bare wall, but it also causes a mold problem, which gives me massive headaches.  So we knew this would have to be corrected.  The problem was time and money of course.  We just cleaned it up the best we could and waited for rainy season to be over and the wall to dry up.  Then we just kept the door shut to the room that was the worst.  




I have never actually used a school room.  School is usually set up at the kitchen table.  As you can see from the picture below of our house in Encarnacion de Diez. 


If you want to see why Josiah looks so worried you can Click Here to check out the post.

This house does not have a big enough dining room/kitchen to use it for school and eating, so we first tried putting their desk in their rooms.  I ran from girl's room to boy's room homeschooling for about one semester.  It was not ideal.  So, we cleaned up the empty room down stairs and sealed the outside wall.  This took care of the mold issue and we had a home school room!  A very ugly home school room, but who cares.  

Last month for only the price of a little paint (I promised cheap) and some creativity we transformed the school room into a very pleasant place to study and learn!  I also promised spectacular, I think you'll have to agree.  It is pretty spectacular!  We've done some cool things on the other walls also.  I'll show them in another post.



How did we do it, you want to know!  We sealed it with primer and waited until we were sure the mold issue was resolved.  Then we painted it white where we wanted the land masses or continents to be.  After that we projected an outline onto the wall, drew a line and painted around it.  It was not that difficult or time consuming.  Our apologies to Madagascar.  I think it got hit by a tsunami when the ocean was being rolled on!   


Yep!  We made these dresses a few years ago and never really liked them.  Now we think they are great!



We are trying to decide how to finish up this wall.  We were thinking maybe a quote or verse, but where...inside a continent or on the "ocean".  Another idea was to shorten the curtains (they are not hemmed yet) and put a string to attach art work below the window.  Anyone have a good idea?  Put it in the comments below.

15 comments:

  1. SOOOOO creative. I love it. It is beautiful! I like the verse AND the string ideas.

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  2. Wow! Love it! We love maps of the world around here :-) I really like the idea of a string below the window to clip artwork on.

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    1. Yes! I have to resist the urge to cover every surface of our house with maps, especially since there are so many ways to decorate with them.

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  3. You did a spectacular job!!!!! LOVE the "dressy" curtains too.

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    1. The love decluttering, up-cycling and free/cheap, so three dresses taking up space in the closet were begging to become something useful. LOL!

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  4. Um.... Wow! You have sparked my creativity! What a great job you did! Love it!

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    1. Thanks! Whatever creativity this sparked, I would love to see it.

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  5. Don't shorten the curtains (other than a small hem)! They look awesome just like they are, and I think you would be disappointed by them looking choppy rather than long and flowy.

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    1. I think your right about the curtains. One of my children was looking at the pictures and commented that the curtains made the window look bigger.

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  6. You did a fantastic job, and I would recommend leaving it just like it is. Since it is such a bold focal point for the room, I wouldn't add anything else. With it being a school room (where clutter naturally happens on all of the surfaces), I would just leave it clutter free.

    I'll bet your kids think you're the best Mom in the world for giving them such an awesome space!

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    1. I made a timeline on one of the walls, so that wall is already busy. I probably should keep this one less cluttered. Thanks for the impute!

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  7. Love it! So creative and what a difference the atmosphere will make for you homeschooling. I like the quote idea. Could you combine it with geography/history and look for famous quotes from people from those continents or missionaries who went to that continent. (ie South America you could use a quote from Jim Elliott, etc.) Great space. Enjoy!

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Thank you for taking a moment to share your thoughts with me.