I have been working in my daughter’s kindergarten classroom every other Thursday, helping her teacher with prep work or getting projects ready…anything that needs to be done, really. Since the beginning of the school year, there has been this major eyesore. Every time I’m in there, I stare at it knowing that I could make it look better. Finally, I had the nerve to ask her if I could fix it.

“It” being the class VIP chair. 


It’s an old children’s chair that was being held together by duct tape. There were screws and nail heads sticking out, barely keeping it together and the finish…well, it just needed some TLC.

Finally, last Friday I asked the teacher if I could pull this out of the classroom and fix it, paint it and overall, clean it up. By a complete coincidence, my daughter is this week’s VIP.

I dismantled the chair as much as I could to paint it.


Yep…it was screwed into a Popsicle stick.


Since this was for my daughter’s classroom, I had her do most of the work. She sanded down the painted stars to a smooth finish. She did a great job.



Then, she painted it Annie Sloan Chalk Paint® in Duck Egg blue and even hit the edges with sandpaper to distress it.


My dad fixed the chair itself by re-screwing it on the sides, front and back. He did a stellar job, too. He went and bought drills with a counter sink (???) so that the wood doo-dads (technical term) could fill the holes and be painted. It looks very professional! 

I painted the top part as a chalkboard so that the chair can be personalized each week with the new VIP.

This week, it’s Samantha.

That kid is a great painter! 


I hope her teacher likes it and the kids have fun personalizing it when they are the class VIP’s. 

I had fun working on this project with my little one. I don’t do much to help out at school, other than being in the class every other week, so if I can contribute in a way that utilizes my talents, I feel pretty good about that.