The Teacher Desk of my Dreams

I've been wanting to blog about this one since before I was officially blogging. It's the story of how I met my dream teacher desk.  It all started when I found this picture on Pinterest.The original source led back to Michelle Oakes' beautiful desk. It was love at first sight for me!

It was also love at first for  my bestie, Krista, who teaches 2nd grade across the hall. We had to have it! So our first free Sunday, we borrowed her parent's HUGE pick up and truck and off to Ikea we went.

{Krista}

 {Me}

 Purchasing furniture at Ikea is a very good work out.
So is lifting the furniture in and out of a gigantic pick up truck.
We later found out this was all cake compared to the assembly process.
Speaking of cake,we made a quick but well deserved stop at the neighboring Cheesecake Factory for lunch :)

Then it was straight to school to where the real work began. No husbands, no helpers, just two teachers on a mission...

 

This was my desk space before. It was cluttered, messy, and too busy! Fortunately you can't see the mess inside of the drawers.

 

 This was the view from the door of my classroom leading towards my teacher desk and my book bin storage shelf.

All in all we worked for over 12 hours from the time we left my house to the time we left the school around 8:30 at night. By the end we were exhausted.  But it was all worth it because the next morning, my work space looked like this...

And my book bin shelf looked like this. SO much better!!

I realize not every body can just go out and purchase new furniture for their classroom.  I looked at this as a personal investment. All the pieces belong to me so I can now take them with me to any classroom I am in. If I ever find myself not in the classroom, I would be able to make equally good use of them at my own house. And it has helped tremendously with my classroom organizational skills and sanity!

I am linking up with Tara's from 4th Grade Frolic for her weekly Monday Made It Linky. Technically this one would be more of a "put together" then a "made" but it was still a Pinterest inspired project and the put together part was no joke! :)

 

I'll be back tomorrow to show you how I use the space now and share some of my orginizational tips that  anyone can build into their work space.