Hall shelves completed

Here's what the upstairs hallway looked like before. There was one little set of built-in shelves on the half-wall at the top of the stairwell. The picture on the left is looking out from the Safari Room. The view on the right is looking out the bedroom door.And here are the completed shelves!
I've still got about 20 crates of fiction in the garage. I will have to do some heavy culling to get them in this space. They're boxed alphabetically, so I'll just go through each crate in the garage and bring them up an armload at a time.

Here's another sloppily stitched panorama, so you can see the layout better:

I love my green chair, another ancestral hand-me-down. I found the table in the alley and will either paint or refinish it. I need some sheer curtains for the window, too. Just simple ones, stretched between two rods top and bottom.
I have a bunch of smaller pieces of art that I need to get framed. That's Mom's wedding photo, and I have two of her pastels on the other walls you can't see.

And that's it for the bookshelves! The next project you'll see is the Undersea Room, which has now been partially painted and beadboarded. It will likely be finished tomorrow or the next day.

Why "The Safari Room"?

Susan was wondering why I call it The Safari Room. Here's why:
This used to be the nursery. I love the mural, and since I wasn't putting bookcases on that wall, I decided to leave it there. The children on one end and the giraffe on the other were partly covered, but it's otherwise intact.

Here's what it looks like now:
I have a bunch of stuff in boxes under the desk, since I was using the room for storage until the shelves were done and the books in. This room is all nonfiction.

And this is the fourth wall:
That's a nice big closet that extends behind the wall on either side. Also full of boxes, an extra futon, some clothes. i.e. a lot of stuff I should just get rid of.

Next up, the hallway shelves.

Safari Room shelves completed

Before:

After!
Again, click on the photo to see it somewhat larger.

I'm still getting the hang of stitching photos together in Photoshop, and I just spent an inordinate amount of time trying to do the whole room just right, but the result looked like crap, so here's my very first, but simpler, effort. I'll post the rest of the room (i.e. the other two walls) tomorrow.

Many, many thanks to the one who really made this post possible. You know who you are.

Kitchen shelves completed

Before:

After!
I uploaded this picture full size, so you cookbook voyeurs can click on it and scan the titles. (Might still be a little blurry, but mostly legible.)

The crates you see in the dining room are the foodie memoirs and other food-related books that will have to live somewhere else. As you can see, I had just enough room for all my cookbooks alone.

Luck runs out

I did not win the lottery. Darn!

Guess it's back to work for me to earn Sophie's kibble. And to pay for Pascal's artistry. And the electrician.

When I was having the bookcases built in my old place, a few people said, "Why are you paying all that for something you can't take with you?" I think part of that springs from a renter's mentality (we've all been there), much as some of us find it hard to let go of a good box. (It's sturdy! It has handholds! I can use it again!) I moved five times in two years, and trust me, I stored a lot of empty cardboard.

But I've lived with my share of crummy bookcases, and figured out that quality bookcases, in the amount and sizes I needed, wouldn't cost much less than built-ins, and if I moved, wouldn't necessarily fit in the new space. That has turned out to be true. Plus, I could recoup some of the cost in added house value. Homeowner's mentality, that.

Finally, I've just always wanted to have a book-lined room (or rooms), where books are as much a part of the architecture as windows and doors.

Some people will skimp and save to go on a cruise, have a fancy stereo or buy the latest sports car. My indulgence is bookshelves.

Well, that and good restaurants and an occasional pedicure.

No, I don't think my luck has really run out. Just the little bit of it related to winning sweepstakes.

Pascal's progress

Once again, here's a picture of the downstairs bathroom, with the lovely cast-iron clawfoot tub. The tub is original to the house, I believe. The previous owners had it re-porcelained, so it is perfectly white and smooth.

But I have been afraid to use it because the inspector pointed out that one of the floor joists beneath the bathroom had been cut through, and another had been notched.

Pascal to the rescue! He managed to get into the crawl space – no small feat, as it's quite a tight opening, about five feet off the floor of the basement – and build a sturdy framework. See that pipe? That's the gas line. If the tub had crashed through the floor, it could very well have blown up the house.
Meanwhile, the bookcases are also progressing. Here are the kitchen shelves. Notice the smaller cabinet door above the broom closet. Pascal rebuilt it with new trim and stained it to match. The ceiling molding is in now, too. There are little triangular shelves that will go in on the right to tie the shelves in to the angled wall. (You can click on the Books tag at the end of this post to see what the space looked like before.)

He's also started on the shelves in the upstairs hallway. (I forgot to take a "before" photo, whoops.) There will also be a shelf over the bathroom door, and he'll run the trim up the ceiling part of that triangle on the end so it looks like the space there is part of the shelves (which it will be).

Once the hall is done, on to the Safari Room. When all the shelves are in, he'll paint everything. Then there's the wainscoting for the guest room and retrimming some oddball woodwork in the living room.

I'm glad I'm able to get all this work done now, as he told me he's planning to move back to France in another year or so.

Mom suggested shackles.

Bookshelf progress

For the last several days, my kitchen bookcase has been coming together. Pascal built the big pieces in his shop and is now working on all the fiddly installation and trim. Because the house is 113 years old, nothing is plumb, but he is making it work.


He's out today getting a root canal (ugh) but should be done in a few days. He will paint the shelves to match the current colors in the kitchen (a light café au lait), since I don't think I'll get around to repainting the walls and cabinets in a different color anytime soon. I don't like the dark cabinets, but they're OK for now. My inspiration for redoing them may well come from day-lab diy.

Inching along

My carpenter just stopped by to take rough measurements for bookcases. Floor-to-ceiling in the kitchen and the upper hallway, and three walls' worth in the Safari Room/study.

And he says he can get into the crawlspace to brace the joist under the downstairs tub. The inspector had noted that the joist had been cut there and was starting to twist, which could spell disaster under a cast iron tub full of water. It's a tiny space, but Pascal assured me it's a simple fix and he's not claustrophobic. Hooray!

What it's all going to cost I'm afraid to guess. But in the end, very worth it.

Now to empty the car and go get another load.

Barbecue later at one friend's, and then wine here with some others, again.

Happy Memorial Day!

Forty crates

There it is, folks. Forty crates of nonfiction, including eight crates of cookbooks and food-related writing.

The boxes are roughly labeled by category (memoir, travel, reference etc.), and more specifically for the cookbooks (Asian, French, fish, vegetarian, desserts, famous chefs, etc.), with a big "C" on each side. I want to get the kitchen bookcase built first and will get the movers to place the crates nearer the garage door so I can get to them easily.

Next up: fiction. I'm going to guess 20-30 crates for that, but packing them should be easier since novels tend to be fairly standard in size.

Tote 'em

Thank goodness for Costco! Not long ago I spotted these 12-gallon totes there for $6 apiece and bought a few, thinking they'd be good for clearing some excess books from my shelves for storage in the garage. (While looking for an image online, I see that Staples has them on sale for $10 apiece, so I am feeling smug)

Well, I've now filled 30 of them with non-fiction (not counting cookbooks), and I just got another 25 for fiction. I'm not sure how much they weigh full, but I'd say at least 50 pounds. I can lift them enough to stack them five high. (I'm using a dolly to get them out to the garage, though.) That means the movers should have no problem, assuming they're at least as strong as I am (god, they better be).

All the books will have to live in the new garage for a while until I can get bookcases built. Happily, my carpenter is still around and will take a look at the house after I close next week.

Books books books

I would like to show you what my bookshelves look like right now, but I can't do it. They're completely jam-packed with books, two or three layers deep. They look wonderful, and they look like hell.

See, I like books. A lot. And for the last few years I have had access to new books at very affordable prices. So I've bought books. A lot.

I bought books because I liked the covers. I bought books because I had heard something about the author. I bought books I wanted to read, and books I thought I should read. I bought books that reflected the kind of person I would like to be.

I filled up the shelves, then filled them some more, then insinuated books into every crack, cranny and crevice I could find on a shelf.

You can guess what happened next.

I ran out of room.

It's a comforting sight – I'll never lack for anything to read, no matter what my mood. But it's too much. It's too much for the room. It's too much for the pretty bookcases.

So begins the Great Bookcase Cleanup of Ought-Seven.

More later.

(Thanks to The Nonist's Hot Library Smut for the above photo of Prague's Strahov Monastery library.)

My bookshelves: an introduction

These are old photos, taken in ...2000? 2001? on this archaic medium you may have heard of called "film." The first photo is of my messy desk and craptacular fiberboard bookcases that I bought at a yard sale. Look! There's my old iMac.

The next photo is of Pascal, a woodworking genius. I was complaining to my welder (another story) about my inability to find anyone willing to build bookcases for a price I could afford. "What about Pascal?" he said. "He's a carpenter."

I knew Pascal from a friend's swing band. He plays a mean guitar. Turns out he also did a cabinetmaking apprenticeship in France. He looked at the room, gave me a bid, and I said, "done and done." Didn't check references, didn't even know about the apprenticeship at that point. He hadn't done a big job like this here before, didn't have many of the tools he needed, or any workspace of his own. But he bought the tools and set up shop in my garage. (Which was full of crap that I stored for some freeloading "friends" for a year and a half, but that's yet another story – and a lesson learned.)

The result? As Pascal would say: Voilà:
The design and execution are entirely Pascal's. I said I wanted the bookcases to be adjustable and to wrap around the windows, and I wanted crown molding. That was it.

Thanks to Pascal, the edges of the adjustable shelves are all beveled, and the skirt around the tops of the shelves is echoed by one on the middle shelves. The skirt also serves to make the shelves look the exactly same height all the way around the room, though the floor is not level. Hard to see those details in this photo, but trust me. He also did all the painting. It's a pale sage green (I did pick that).

So that's the background on the Great Bookcase Cleanup of Ought-Seven. Stay tuned.

P.S. The white poodle is the late, great and gay Doogie of the fabulous ears.