Closet turned Art Space

Remember my new table?

Well, since I love it so much, and although I don't mind if it gets normal wear and tear from eating on it, I don't exactly want my kids doing art projects on it.  I want to keep markers, paint, and glitter glue as far away as possible.  But I love that my kids do art, so I knew I needed to figure out a way to still have an art space in our home.  One night around 3:30a.m., as I was laying wide awake after one of the kids had woken me up from a nice sound sleep, I was brainstorming what to do about this dilemma.  I actually love figuring out ways to make the spaces in our home work extra hard for us.  Our house is not large, the bedrooms are on the smaller side, and every inch counts.  I knew there was a lot of wasted space in Peyton's closet and it was not being used to it's full capacity.  She is also the one who does the most art, so it made the most sense to me to convert her closet into an art space.   

My original idea was that Tim would build a desk into the closet, but then we decided that it would be easiest and quickest to buy a desk and just put it in there.  Then we measured my desk (below) and realized that it actually fit perfectly.  

So rather than buying a new desk for her that would get covered in messy art projects, we decided to give her my old desk and get an update for me.  Although you can't see it in the pictures, there are spots that are less shiny and even a bit splotchy from when I spray painted it white a year ago (it used to be yellow). 

We found this cute Josephine desk on sale at World Market for me.   

I love the X for the legs.  It gives it a little more style and sophistication than my simple parsons desk.  It's definitely an upgrade.

Here is the before picture of Peyton's closet (after we removed everything)

And here's the after picture:

We painted the inside a soft shade of blue so that it would stand out from her gray walls.  Getting that desk in there was quite the wrestling match, but Tim squished and squeezed and pounded it in there.  Since it fits so snugly, it kind of looks like a built in. Then I made a list of everything we needed to store and organize (crayons, markers, stamps, paper, glitter glue, play doh, watercolor paints, brushes, etc…) and I hit up Marshalls and Ikea.  

If you're wondering what we did with all her clothes, everything fit into her dresser, except for a few nicer dresses that I hung up in our closet.  And the kids keep their shoes either on a shelf in the garage right outside our kitchen door or under their beds. This arrangement may not work forever, but that's okay.  It won't be a big deal to pull the desk out and convert it back into a closet if the day comes where we feel that that would be the best use of the space.  For the time being though, this is just what we need.