I want to share my favorite find so far. I bought a set of school lockers for $30. I knew as soon as I saw them that they would be the perfect solution to our unfortunate lack of closets and cluttered, unorganized side-entry hallway where we shed our coats and shoes. I also loved the idea of our home school having its own lockers! There were two banks of three lockers, for a total of six, which means one locker for each family member plus two more for guests.
Forgive me, but I forgot to take a "before" pic, so you will have to form one in your mind. They were just painted a plain white and the door fronts were a bit rusty. My wonderful husband cleaned them up and fixed/reinforced a few things, and then painted the frames and insides with about 10 cans of this:
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| Rustoleum's Hammered Finish Silver Paint |
There were probably cheaper options (10 cans @ $5.77 each = $57.70) but we went with this paint because it looks nice and will leave a very durable finish. When he finished that step, I painted the door fronts with a charcoal grey chalkboard paint. I thought it would be fun for each person to be able to decorate their own door, and change it up from time to time. I am very happy with how this product covered and how it looks, and it was very reasonably priced at $9.67 for a quart. I did two coats and I still have over half the can left so I can do another chalkboard project somewhere else in the house as well.
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| Rustoleum's Chalkboard Paint - I had mine tinted to the color "moonstone". |
First, here is the "before" shot of my hallway. We just had coat hooks on the wall and a heap of shoes below, as well as a catch-all shelf constantly piled with stuff. Oh, and Noodle's dish, which we moved to the kitchen.
Aaaannnnndddd.... AFTER!
And finally, after 3 days' curing time for the paint, we were free to write on our lockers! Yay!
I am beyond thrilled with how they turned out. What do you think?
