Building a library this weekend...

It's no secret that James and I love books. We have a LOT of books. And something tells me that the digitized world of reading on our horizon won't phase the acquisition of soon-to-be-antiquated yet always-the-best-in-our-minds hard-copy books. In our last apartment we had five bookshelves brimming with books, but on our move to Chicago four of the bookshelves completely fell apart. (They were the cheap $30 grad-school-budget bookshelves from Target, so we weren't too surprised). Thier collapse was a minor tragedy, however, because James' "office" has been a disaster zone with 25 boxes of books spilling out all over the floor. He literally hurdles to his desk over boxes to work on grad school applications, and that makes me sad. I was so excieted for him to have an awesome office to work in when we moved into this fabulous townhouse, but alas, patience has been required of us.

But we have saved our pennies from month to month, and we finally saved enough to invest in new bookshelves! Hooray!

These bookshelves, however, have proven to be a whole lot of work. We bought an Ivar shelving unit from Ikea for 3 reasons: 1) they are real wood, and hopefully will not collapse on our next move; 2) they are streamlined, have open backs, and look different from the ubiquitous Billy bookshelves; 3) they are affordable. Some of our friends from Princeton had these bookshelves, and we always thought they looked great in their apartment. Unfortunately, Ikea is in the process of discontinuing them, and so they no longer sell them in finished stains. Thus we had to buy them as unfinished pine. What does this mean?

This means that I've spent many, many hours today using pre-stain on 18 shelves and 4 side units, then put one coat of stain on them. Tomorrow I will spend several more hours putting on a second coat of stain, and then a coat of polyurethane. Then, after the last coat has dried, I will sing the Hallelujia chorus and never stain bookshelves again.

The fun part of today? Painting our downstairs family room hunter green (We used Sabal Palm Behr paint). When we put our bookshelves against the wall, all that lovely green will show right through. And hopefully the rich, dark color that we've stained the wood in combination with our deep green will provide a thoroughly country-English-style library ethos.

Can't wait until this project is finished. Can't wait until James has a proper office. Can't wait until I've lit the fire and am reading Jane Austin in our English library. The end.



The Ivar Unit:


A few library pics I found inspirational. (both courtesy of House Beautiful).