We’ve been in our house nearly a year now, during which time we have had to do lots of renovations to a 1940s building. A continuing project (saga) has been new built-in bookshelves for around our fireplace in the main lounge room.

We were spoilt in our old house in the bookshelf department because when we moved in there were already some massive shelves that had been built in beside the fireplace there. In that case, it was a Victorian terrace, and therefore had high, high ceilings, high enough to fit all my books.

This time, I was inspired to go with the same format of shelves on either side of the fireplace, and wanted to find something in keeping with the style of the house. We have casement windows with small panes, and we decided to go for that look, so we will have shelves that have three ‘rows’ on each side, to create squarish shelves. Cupboards underneath are designed to fit my Zetta Florence photo albums… The vision is to have ‘library’ lights at the top (something along these lines).

As usual when I think of doing a work in progress shoot, I forgot to take the ‘before’ photo. But here it is in progress, with the horizontal shelves missing as they are in the paint workshop. Will post a photo of the finished product in due course… my painter promises it will be before Christmas.