Tried It Tuesday {book bins and painted bookcases}

Happy Tuesday!!  It is Welcome Back to School for me.  Of course, I am writing this on Monday night at 11 p.m. and am still wide awake.  Trying to switch back to a normal bedtime always makes for a great week back.  We have Open House on Wednesday night but at least we only have students on Thursday and Friday.
Since, we aren't officially back yet, I racked my brain thinking about what I could show you that I've "tried" this week.  I finally decided to share with you how I tried transforming my classroom library!

My Tried It:

Book Bins and Painting Bookcases
When I taught 6th grade, I was teaching social studies for a few years and then math for five.  Having a large classroom library was not a top priority.  Then, five years ago I switched to fourth grade and slowly started collecting books through yard sales, ebay, and donations.  My library has grown every year and this summer I decided that I really wanted to transform it by organizing my books in bins.

There are so many amazing classroom libraries all over the internet.  I have drooled over them, especially this library from Beth Newingham's Scholastic blog post from way back in 2009!  I just love those bookcases and baskets.  The bookcases line up so neatly and you can tell they are great quality.

In addition to not having as many books as I would like, one of my other problems is that I don't have  amazing sturdy bookcases that line up nice and neat in my room.  

Last summer I bought a cheap bookcase for more storage from WalMart ($15) and it broke by the end of the year.

This summer, I found two bookcases at local yard sales and they were both very sturdy.  One was $5 and the other was $7.  However, they were different colors and mismatched, so I knew I would have to paint them.  I decided to go with black because I found some bright bins at the Dollar Tree (for $1 each of course) that would just "pop" against the black.

I got to work priming the bookcases.

These mini foam rollers really do a nice job making the work a little easier.

Next, I used an acrylic black gloss paint.

Then, I went to work in my room painting two other bookcases.  A friend gave me the tall bookcase.  This one is not as sturdy as the other three but it makes a good corner piece.  The other bookcase is school grade quality and super sturdy.

There was one shelf that was not removable in the tall bookcase.  The others were removed and painted on a flat surface using the same foam mini roller.

I am not even sure how many hours I spent painting these four bookcases, but it was many!  Each bookcase took THREE coats of the black paint!  Painting the little nooks and crannies in the "ABCD" bookcase was a complete pain too.  However, they looked awesome when I was done.  So, you can just imagine how disappointed I was when I placed these book bins on the shelves and they scratched the paint and were like sticking to the paint!  The original two bookcases had been drying for like a month and the other two were only drying for two days.  But still!!!  What was I going to do?

My first solution was to spray this Mod Podge adhesive on the shelves to "protect" them from scratches.

It covered the shelves okay but I couldn't spray many coats because it was the stinkiest, toxic stuff on the planet and unless I wanted to haul all the bookcases outside, I wasn't going to be spraying that anymore!  Next, I tried my trusty varnish from my mod podge projects.  I brushed it on the top of each shelf with a foam disposable brush.

I let it dry a few days, went back to school and loaded the bins back on the shelves.  

The varnish has seemed to work and the bins don't "stick" anymore.  I am nervous about how it will hold up to student usage though.  Those fourth graders can sure be tough on furniture and I will have all fifty 4th graders using my library this year since we are departmentalizing.

I already LOVE that the library is organized in bins now.  We are going to do some genre activities at the beginning of the year and explore using our classroom library.  I will have the students help place sticker labels inside each book that names the bin they belong in.  Each group would only have to place stickers in the books of one or two bins and that job will be done. :)  My books already had color coded labels on the binding (sealed with shipping tape) according to their AR (Accelerated Reading) level.

Have you tried painting bookcases?  How did they hold up to the wear and tear?  I would be grateful if you have any tips for me because I might be repainting/sealing next summer!