A Place for those Pesky Binders

Lots of teachers who have a blog do something called "Made-it Monday" to show everyone a project they worked on over the weekend.  When I get the idea in my head to make something, I usually have a hard time waiting for the weekend to work on it - sometimes I start late at night on a Tuesday or at 6 AM on a Friday.  So, with that in mind... I refinished some furniture for my classroom!

Binders are the thing I always have trouble storing.  Our kids have fairly small desks and LOTS that need to go in them, so I have always tried to keep their writing portfolios somewhere in my room to keep them out of their desks.  The problem is that they take up SO MUCH ROOM!  They never fit quite right on the shelves I have.  They are awfully wide for the amount of pages they hold (at least for the first half of the year).  A few years ago I started seeing quarter-circle and semi-circle shelving to help solve this problem, but they were very expensive.  Therefore, you can probably understand my excitement when I was driving down a street nearby and saw this on the side of the road!

Someone had dismantled a desk and they were getting rid of the pieces.  I made a hasty but very safe U-turn to grab this chunk.  It was in pretty rough shape, lots of screws sticking out and some holes around the top, but I had a feeling that I could spiff it up.

The first, and most expensive, step was to prime it.  I know from experience that if I skip this step (which is so tempting) the paint will all peel/chip off in a matter of weeks, so I wanted to do this one right.  So, while Mr. M and his friends were playing video games, I spread my painting gear around the dining room and got to work.  It took a few layers to get that shiny, fake wood all covered up.

It looked so much better all cleaned up, but I wanted it to have a pop of color too.  I love color! I though purple would look nice in our mostly green and blue classroom.  Here's a great tip - when you only need to do a small area, ask for a sample size at the paint counter.  There is a surprising amount of paint in them and they usually cost around $3!

I also added a top to it.  The top hid the holes that I could fill in.  I also hate to have wasted space in my room, so now the top can be used to hold things as well.  I am not totally sure what yet, but I am sure it will be well-used.

So here's how it turned out:

I was really tempted to add the little bit of green glitter paint I have left over from the name tag board, but I refrained.  I am sure that it will find its way into our room in some form before September 5th!