Home Library
A dream come true
When we first moved into this house, to begin at the very beginning, I had a plan for built-in bookshelves. I was able to find, and then was given, enough bookshelves that I had storage for all the books, and as temporary fixes so often do, the project was put on hold indefinitely. Which was something of a problem, because the walls in the dining room were ugly.
My intent was always to build bookshelves over the parts of the walls where windows had been taken out and the holes not drywalled over. When we bought the house, it was lined with the cheap splintery 'wood paneling’ likely installed in the 70s. The drywall behind it was largely in good shape, we painted it bright colors we liked, and the house was transformed from dark cave to warm cottage. Except for the back corners of the dining room, where my son who was doing much of the renovation simply inverted the paneling and tacked it up until we could build bookshelves. Which… didn’t happen. I was getting ready to do ceiling work, covering up the popcorn, but hadn’t yet started on that project… sometimes procrastination is fortuitous!
Friend and colleague Jonna - she who keeps Raconteur Press on target, on time - found a listing for bookshelves, and the RacPress office would be able to use them, and if there are enough, she was hoping to set up her shop as well? I have a truck, so LawDog and I headed down to see if we could secure bookshelves. I think both of us had a bit of a bogglement when we saw the stacks and stacks and stacks of them in the building located in a tiny Texas town.
Come to find out, something I had no idea of, being a recent emigre to this great state, Larry McMurtry had four bookstores in Archer City. His goal was to turn it into Hay-on-Wye of the Americas, and in addition to his four, there was a fifth independent store, and it was a destination. I am very sorry I never got the chance to take a look at them while they were in operation, as I adored my brief visit to Hay-on-Wye. There is still one of his bookstores which is undergoing renovations and will be reopening later this year - I’ll do a proper write-up for it, as it deserves it. But for a hint of what it holds…
Between us, over the course of a week, we made three trips, hauled back a total of thirteen bookshelves, and six of them landed in my garage.
There was only one small little problem. My ceilings are eight feet tall, and the book bookcases were built around a full sheet of plywood to be four feet by eight. There was another problem. A big storm was predicted for the upcoming week (as I write this, starting in a day and a half) and with multiple inches of rain predicted, my garage floods. It’s actually built to compensate for this, and last spring we had about five inches of water in there one day without lasting damage. But the shelves could not stay on the garage floor with the threat of flash flooding looming over us.
Three days, six bookcases. How hard could this be? I figured I’d start with the easy ones I knew would stand up in the house, and put the two bookcases flanking the faux fireplace.
As I worked on it, my husband and I were discussing the full scope of the project, which would involved the living and dining room, displacing a total of seven other bookcases to put these five in (the sixth new one is destined for elsewhere). Now, some of those would move around to new locations, and as we measured and talked about it, we realized a couple of things. Firstly, there was a 35” gap between the fake fireplace mantel and the existing short built-in shelves. I needed 36” for the new book case. Secondly, if we moved the whole structure we were setting up over three inches to the coat closet door, we could put two matching glass-door bookcases between the new ones…
Scope creep does happen on any mission. In this case, it was the perfect excuse to get rid of the ugly, useless, dangerous abomination that had been the centerpiece of my living room. I had things to say as I uncovered the construction that I won’t repeat here. Suffice it to say good riddance and bad cess to ‘em, all those who think they can take shortcuts everywhere. Thankfully, it appears the gas log was never hooked up to the gas, as there were no vents of any sort. The gas stub was already securely capped off, and now completely hidden behind a bookcase where it shall stay.
At the end of day 1, we had a very nice setup in the living room, and I was looking forward to seeing how much I could get done on day 2, where I’d only have part of the day after work to get it done.
Since several people asked how I got these upright, and there were no photos taken (my husband was helping as much as he could with them, but mostly I was working solo as he can’t overexert his heart), I’ll try to describe the process we came up with. We laid the case flat on it’s back, then lifting the head (top) of the case, angled and slid that up the wall we wanted it on. This wasn’t easy to do, as they wanted to slip on the wood floor. Then when they wedged at the last inch or so, I kicked them with steel toes. I do not recommend this if you are worried about your ceilings. I was already planning to do work on the ceilings, but as it happens, other than scraping off popcorn, I didn’t damage the drywall. Once they were fully vertical, they could be moved the final inches into proper placement. Other than one of them, that is, which stuck on something and I had to whack it heartily with the sledgehammer until we got it wedged into the position. Again, not recommending these methods if you aren’t planning on repainting and trimming and finishing up pretty later!
Once we had the first one in place and looking good, I looked at my husband and said “I think I have time today to get in the other two.” He looked at me and told me to take a ten minute break at least, and then decide.
I think you can see why that last shelf - the one closest to my beloved - didn’t want to get in there where it was supposed to be. I’ll have to use trim to hide the gap, that is fine. It’s not going anywhere, and we’ve anchored them to the walls just in case, and I may anchor them to a ceiling joist if I can find one. (pretty sure they run parallel to the shelves) Once the bookcases were up I washed all of the shelves (so much Texas dust and popcorn bits!) and started getting books on them. I have lots of room for library expansion! One of the biggest challenges was unraveling, moving, and then re-placing (carefully!) twenty feet of pothos vine, and another which was a mere six or seven feet long. Fortunately I think I managed without major damage.
One and a half long, solid days of work, and my home library is beautiful already. It needs fit and finish and a ton of housecleaning to happen. I’m so happy, though, even while tired and sore. This has been great exercise, moving all the books and shelves and… whew.
The sixth shelf is supposed to go in my studio. Since it shouldn’t be too difficult to get in there - I say this, knowing there is a tight hall and a turn to navigate - I left it for last. I have raised beds to fill and get dirt out of my truck, first. Who needs a gym membership when you have projects to get done, right?
I like it. It looks nice.
I haz an envi! That looks gorgeous.