Filling my bookshelves was great fun at first. It was a chance to be reunited with old friends, who had been hidden in boxes for so long. I relished the process of re-alphabetising my favourite fiction authors, and finding new ways to categorise my non-fiction subject areas. (Sad, I know…) Rowan saw what mum was doing and thought he’d like to lend a hand… 

So all was going swimmingly… BUT then I got about three-quarters of the way through and realised that ALL MY BOOKS WERE NOT GOING TO FIT!!! The collection for these shelves doesn’t include my board books and picture books (now in the playroom or Rowan’s room), my early/middle readers (now in storage for when Rowan is old enough) or the reference books (in the study).

Brad would die if I suggested we needed more bookshelves, and, truth be told, I don’t think I want any either. I like the feature of this wall of books and I’d like it to be self-contained. So I began the heart-breaking process of sifting through, shelf by shelf, to find some volumes that might be better off at the second-hand bookshop. Books I’d never read, would never find an occasion to lend, and if I was quite honest with myself, would never be read by me… Having completed the first cull, I still have about 60 or so books that don’t fit.  

It’s not such a fun job any more.

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.