Busyness on the Homefront

Firstly, I would just like to express how difficult it is to do much of anything on a computer that is missing the "E" key.  Toddlers.  Sheesh.

It may have been a quiet spring and summer on the blog, but it's been anything but that at home.  We purchased a homestead that came complete with a garage that had been converted to living space.  With the exception of the space carved out of it and finished as a laundry/utility room and the chunk that is now a shower in the main living area's bathroom, the room was a large, open blank space.  It's tall.  Being a former garage, the ceiling is nearly ten feet above the floor.  It's wide.  It was a two-car garage, after all.

You're counting the number of "E"s I've used, aren't you?  I know I am!!!

This wonderful blank space was designated to be our school room, so we wouldn't have to school at the dining room table as we did at our last house.  It was one of the selling points of a house that was clearly built in the 70s and last updated in the 80s.  And so, we put in bookshelves to house all our books and keep them from being either scattered about the rest of the house or stored permanently in moving boxes.  We put a table and chairs in to provide us with space to work.  We added the accoutrements of schooling.  Supplies, crafts, busy activities for otherwise uncontainable little brothers.  We put all these elements of a working schoolroom in around the piles of boxes that we didn't otherwise know what to do with when we unloaded the moving truck.  Boxes of Cub Scout stuff that had been "donated" by families as they graduated to Boy Scouts.  Boxes of memorabilia, both hobbies and remnants of family vacations.  Boxes of kid's art projects and evidence of their academic progress.

And so, we spent the first two school years in this house "doing school" at the dining room table.  The dining room opens into a sitting room space, and as the sun traveled across the sky each day in the colder months, we would follow it from dining to sitting rooms, until we ended each day by the front windows, computers and books and papers scattered from bins on the cabinet on the back wall of the dining room all the way across the dining table, the end tables, the couch, footstool and floor of the sitting room.  And we were distracted by EVERYTHING.  Outside.  TV.  Dog.  Food calling to us from the kitchen.  Dishes and other tasks begging to be done.

Last spring, I decided to reclaim my school room.  We would contain this debris field of schooling in a place where all the supplies (and more importantly, the printer) would be on hand.  There would be a place for everything, and everything would be in it's place!  I measured walls.  I drew on grid paper.  I dreamed up solutions.  I dug out all the scrap lumber from the garage (much of it donated by the original homeowner).  I pulled up a strip of carpet 52 inches wide in front of the window and started to assemble the frame for my window seat. 

I tore up EXACTLY enough carpet to install a closet, window seat and bookshelf.  This shelf replaces three shelves that had been on the floor along one wall.  Under the bean bags (a homeschool essential), is bare concrete.  Someday, it will be hardwood flooring.

One week after our school year ended, the school room project began!

I finished the last project 4 days before our current school year began.  After I finished the room, I looked at our table, covered with laptops and cables running across the floor, waiting to grab unsuspecting feet and send their owners crashing to the floor, and I thought, "I need a "computer bar"."

The room is not fully complete.  I have not finished pulling down the wainscot paneling and trim on two of the room walls and in the hallway.  I have not yet painted, as I discovered some water damage to the drywall under some of the paneling I did pull down.  I want a new light fixture to hang from the ceiling.  I seriously don't need a ceiling fan in here (it's the coolest room of the house, year-round).  I want to put bi-fold doors on the closet, but for now, the curtain will do. 

Picked up this fabric only because I liked it.  It turned out to be the perfect temporary door!

But it's a usable room.  Our school is contained.  It stays (relatively) clean and organized.  It's a working school room.

It's not my original vision of the school room (which probably would not have worked for my kids anyway).  It's actually a more flexible design.  It's not Andy's vision either.  According to him, it is sadly lacking a ping-pong table, which would have doubled as an excellent surface for doing school work.  But it's working.  And we are no longer a homeschool hurricane in the rest of the house.  The dining and sitting rooms have been reclaimed.  Or will be once canning season ends.   We are removed from distractions.  The kids actually LIKE to be here.

I was so excited to rehang some of our art that was still in its moving packaging. 

Whether you are in the public school, private school, homeschooling, or just in the work season of life, here's to an organized and productive year!

Web Mistress