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After cleaning the garage floor with full-strength Simple Green (to remove the oil spills) and etching it with muratic acid, I painted the floor with a nearly indestructible epoxy garage floor paint from Sherwin Williams. I've tried other floor paints and nothing else is durable enough. It's pricey, but worth it if you don't want to be constantly repainting. The carpet is a leftover scrap from my dad's house -- a happily-accepted donation "to the cause"!
Finally, I spent several weeks climbing up and down a ladder, stapling 12"x12" ceiling tiles over one of the worst drywall jobs I've ever seen. It's not perfect by a LONG shot, but at least it's nice and bright now.
The shelves are my own creation, a desperate attempt at providing enough book storage space without breaking our already-depleted budget. They are simply raw lumber, 12" deep. I drilled holes every 4" along the sides, and the shelves are held up with 3/4" pieces of dowel. Hopefully I can post more detailed plans sometime soon.
The three children's school desks were a garage sale find. I painted each one with Rustoleum spray paint, and replaced the wooden tops with pieces of translucent plastic purchased from a plastics company in Ohio. These tops are translucent, so the children can put lights inside the desks and use them as light tables for tracing pictures -- very handy for the non-artistic types who are still required to illustrate their history and science reports! The chairs came from Lakeshore Classroom Supply.
On the bottom shelf, you may notice a row of red and blue looseleaf binders. The coloring is not accidental. Each child has his/her own color -- my older son gets red, my daughter gets blue, and the up-and-coming preschool son gets green. Binders, desks, chairs, pencil boxes... EVERYTHING is color-coded. (If you've ever had to endure endless days of children's squabbling, you won't have to ask why I did this. 'Nuff said.)
