A tiny office

The back-to-school project I mentioned a few weeks ago is finally done! The Princess started first grade this year and I thought it would be nice for her to start off the new school year with a little work space all her own. I transformed some things I already had to make the cutest six year-old’s office ever.

When my company moved into a new building, I inherited all kinds of things, including a cork board and a side table that have been sitting in my garage waiting for makeovers. I picked out some pretty fabric and ribbon for the bulletin board and my Hero went to Home Depot and got all my supplies to refinish the table, which was the perfect size for a mini writing desk.

A little disclaimer: Apparently I'm not too good about taking all my before and during pics. I'll try and get better.

Everyone’s done a bulletin board makeover by now I’m sure, but I had to do mine a little differently. We're in the process of redoing the girls' room (and by "in the process" I mean we haven't picked out colors, bedding or paint yet...still waiting to get their bunk beds first:

Anyway, I wanted to cover the cork board in a way that could be easily re-coordinated with the décor later if we need to. I got a piece of oak tag and used spray adhesive to attach the fabric, wrapping it about an inch around the back. (By the way, does anyone know what I'm talking about when I say oak tag? That's what we used to call it when I was in school, but the girl at Michael's looked at me like I had a growth when I asked her where it was. So poster board, oak tag, whatever.) When that was dry, I sprayed some more adhesive to attach it to the cork board, which I had painted white.  I stapled the edges to secure it and trimmed it out with pretty fuchsia ribbon. (Thanks to my lovely picture taking skills, you'll have to scroll to the end to see it in it's glory.)

I found sparkly rhinestone flowers at Wal-Mart to make thumb tacks.



They were self adhesive. I thought I could just use E6000 to glue some tacks over the paper backing and be fine, but the poor things didn't last one push. So I traced some white felt, glued it to the adhesive and glued my tacks on top of that. Perfect!

Now, on to the table. Here's my pile of refinishing stuff:

I was a little intimidated because I've never refinished anything and I was looking at an awful lot of chemicals and sanding ahead of me. I also don't have a good history with woodworking. (Honestly, I was thinking I'd just prime and paint it, but my Hero had a right(er) way in mind, so.) It really wasn't bad. I just followed the directions on the can. The only mishap was the supposed stripper pad that fell apart like cotton candy after being moistened with the After Wash. Too bad—that thing worked like a charm... for about 15 seconds. Okay so first we globbed on the stripper and let it do it's thing for about 20 minutes or so, then we scrubbed off the urethane gunk with a stripper pad stiff bristle brush and sanded. We had to do something about the side panel so there would be space to sit comfortably underneath, so we drew an arc and my Hero cut it out with his jigsaw. Then we primed, sanded again and painted.

The legs looked great, but for some reason the top (that was supposed to be the easy part) was all rough and patchy. So I sanded it again. And painted it again. And that didn’t fix it. What the H? The Hero gave up on spray paint and thought we should try to even out the texture with a brush and latex paint. Annnnd that didn’t work. Soo, I sanded it. AGAIN. Spray painted it, again. And decided that was good enough. Three coats of clear gloss later, we it was finally ready to come inside.

I also found a mail sorter in my To Goodwill box, not that she has a lot of bills to keep track of, but I figured she could use it for note pads, library books, cards or whatever. Again, sorry for the lack of before pics but just imagine this black.

And here’s her little “office” all put together:

Isn't it too cute?? She even has her own calendar—Tinkerbell, of course!

I love these pretty pencils. I found them on clearance in Michael’s dollar section. So what does that make them, practically free?  I decorated this can for her lemonade stand last summer (that should be a post of it's own) and it worked perfectly as a pencil holder.

Now I just need to track down a chair for her. I found a cute white one online at Wal-Mart, but it’s about $40. It just bugs me to spend that much, when everything else was free!