Bonnie’s Windowless Classroom Progress Report

Do you remember a few months ago when I posted about my friend Bonnie’s windowless classroom? Previously the 7th & 8th grade history teacher, she is now the middle school counselor. For the past month and a half, we have been chipping away at her inherited guidance classroom, with still a few more projects left to go. We are taking a little pause for the next month, so I thought it would be fun to give you a progress report today.

If you recall from the original post, we are dealing with a large windowless room with unsightly ceiling tile and fluorescent lighting. Not exactly Better Homes & Gardens material 🙂 The perfectionist in me would like to spend quite a bit to make some major changes, but the realist in me realizes that we need to work with what we’ve got and do what we can.

Before I show you where we are now, let’s take a look at what the space looked like when I first saw it. From what I hear, it was a big improvement from what it looked like before.

A few days after seeing this, it got worse. Scary worse. The custodial staff kindly put all the old furniture and stuff from the previous counselor back into the room and it looked like this:

I wish we had some good scary sound effects to go with these pictures. I am sure you are sufficiently horrified though. I certainly was. Besides giving you an idea of the amount of stuff this room contained, it also shows you what the existing furniture we had to work with looked like. Not pretty. Lots of particleboard and metal cabinets.

Let’s take a look at where we are today:

Much better, right?? As you can see, the biggest impact has been made by taking things out. Editing is probably one of the most powerful tools in transforming a space and it does not cost a cent. Besides doing a deep declutter, the next inexpensive change came from painting several of the existing wooden pieces with Annie Sloan chalk paint in French Linen. Although it was time consuming to paint and wax all of the surfaces, it sure saved a lot of money. Plus, it brought a little much-needed cohesiveness to the room.

Classroom Progress Report:

• Painted existing furniture with Annie Sloan chalk paint.
• Added area rug.
• Added two upholstered chairs.
• Purged (a lot).
• Added art & decor
• Edited & styled bookcase.

Room for Improvement:

• Address back wall with filing cabinets.
• Address corner with accumulated stuff.
• Style and create more function around the credenza.
• Style the big table.
• Bring in greenery.
• Cozy up seating area.

Here are a few more photos with notes on what we did and mental notes on what is still left to do.

Furniture Additions

Adding furniture was not really an option, except for the upholstered chairs. Bonnie wanted to get some comfy chairs to bring in that would be welcoming for anyone going through a hard time that might want to talk. I scoured the web for two comfortable upholstered chairs that Bonnie could purchase for less than $150 each with no luck. The only ones I could find were armless. And we all know an armless chair is lacking in the cozy factor 🙂 Guess where we ended up finding the chairs? My house. As I mentioned in THIS post, we were looking to replace our two chairs with a leather couch. So we went ahead and sold our chairs to Bonnie.

New Decor Additions

You might have noticed that the area rug in the classroom is not at all like the ones in the initial inspiration boards. By the time she went to purchase the other rugs, they were both unavailable in the size we needed. What was initially a frustration, ended up being a blessing in disguise. As we started to search for alternatives, this area rug suddenly appeared at Target:

Bonnie ended up loving this rug even more than the previous options. I did too. It is obviously not a real vintage rug, but it sure does look like it. The colors were a fantastic jumping off point for the lamp and the artwork purchases.

So that’s where we are as of today. Bonnie has put the breaks on any spending for the next month (understandably). Even clearance items add up! And I am sure she doesn’t want to keep pouring money into her classroom. She is going to budget a little for November and December to see if we can finish up some of the items still left. After that point, I think we are going to call her classroom complete. I think this project is a good example of striving for progress over perfection. When I look back at where this space started, we really have come a long way!

Posted by Ale & filed under Home Decor. This post has 8 comments.