A Dresser, Recycled and Repurposed!

This year is our first year keeping all the kids home for school. Because we'll be cyber schooling all 3 school-age kids, we needed at least one more desk in our school room (it's actually our front room that you walk into to enter our house, lol). I'm embarrassed to even post a picture of what the space looked like before, so just believe me when I say, we NEEDED more shelf space! There were board games and video games falling all over the place, books that didn't fit on the shelves, puzzles missing pieces...you get the picture.

While I knew we needed more shelf space, I also knew that we didn't have the money to just go to Target and get some new shelves, so I started looking around the house. What could I use in that space? What could I repurpose for something else?

And that's when I remembered this dresser. It had been in our attic when we moved in here 10 years ago. It was missing the bottom 2 drawers and had more dust on it than you'd ever believe! It's been hosed down and wiped down a lot in this picture.

I decided that this dresser would be our new piece for the school room. My husband not only has a power saw, but he actually knows how to use it (great combo, right?); so I asked him to create 2 shelves from an old piece of panelling in our attic, which he did!

I then painted the dresser, with the help of my second son who's 8 and quite the crafty little guy, using the same paint I'd used on our bathroom walls just a couple of months ago. So all in all, this was a totally recycled project that cost me nothing but time! And even THAT was made up in that this project gave me something fun to do with my older boys. :)

So, what do you think? :D I thought it turned out pretty well! It does the job and cost me nothing but effort. It also cleaned up the space enough that we were able to bring over a desk, given to us by our wonderful neighbors, and get a second one in there.