Thrifting for Classroom Furniture

Guess what? I’m THRILLED to say that after being on a cart last year (and teaching in five places around the school) I’ve moved into a permanent room (well, permanent for this year at least)! This means I can NEST…woo hoo! So this summer I kept my eyes peeled for some inexpensive furniture that I could use in my new digs, particularly a stool, a small round table, and some shelves. Happy to report I found all three items, and then some!

With a serious lack of storage in this room I wanted to find at least one shelving unit to put by the door to house the pencil sharpener, hole punch, paper, etc. I was randomly driving down a side street a couple weeks ago and passed a house with a bunch of FREE furniture on the lawn and found the perfect piece:

It was in great shape and just needed to be cleaned up. I decided to paint over the dirty blue with my signature gray to freshen it up a bit. Now here she sits near the entrance of the room:

Did I mention the shelves were FREE?!?! Can’t beat that! The bulletin board on top was found for $2 at Goodwill and I used wrapping paper from Marshall’s to cover the cork and add some bright color!

In the next town over we have a Goodwill bulk/pay-by-the-pound store where items from area Goodwill stores that don’t sell are sent. The prices at this place are dirt cheap (and it is kind of grimy in there so ‘dirt’ cheap is really a good description). Around the perimeter of the store is all sorts of furniture that they are practically giving away. I was able to walk away with a small round wood table, a wooden stool, and a rectangular folding card table for a total of $1.75!!
That’s right, all three pieces for a TOTAL of $1.75! I was pretty thrilled!

Here’s the table and stool before I gave them a fresh coat of paint
(actually, you can see one leg of the table had been painted):

I used my favorite gray spray paint on the legs but had it color matched in a quart of satin paint at Home Depot and used a large foam roller to paint the top. I don’t have very good luck trying to spray paint large surfaces so I find using a roller and ‘regular’ paint instead works much better!

The table came with the top and the legs but was missing the hardware to attach said legs. I purchased four washers and nuts from Home Depot for $2 and since I spent $.75 on the table, I was OK with that! It fits perfectly in one corner of my classroom which I envision
will be a place for collaborative work and creativity.

Finally, the stool from Goodwill was in rough shape but since it was only $.25, I figured even if it fell apart down the road, it’s practically free so why not buy it? I spray painted it ‘watermelon’ hot pink and will use it to sit in front of the class and impart my wisdom upon those little teenagers of mine! 🙂

I plan to post again with a full classroom tour since I’ve put up lots of other pretty things in my room since taking these photos! I think I’m going a bit over board since I’m so giddy to be in one space this year! But, I spend so much time at school (it’s my home away from home) that it’s important for me to have a space that’s pretty, organized, and happy!

And I’ll be back with another FREE CLASSROOM POSTER printable, too!

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