Shelving zen
We moved into our house ("to the country", Mr Dee calls it, mostly because there is now grass instead of road and pavement, the sound of lawnmowers on the weekend, actual pets; ignoring the fact that we are still in zone 1) nearly two years ago now. When we first sat down with the designers to start planning the house, some two years before that, the first thing they asked me was, "What's the one thing you want? Why are you building this house?"
I said, "Because we've had to stop buying books because there's no room. I want bookshelves. I want a whole room of bookshelves."
(They looked at me like I was a really strange person. I get that a lot.)
Long story short: we'd been bracing ourselves to spend thousands of dollars on a built-in bookcase for our front room, when at the Boxing Day sales, while hunting for something else entirely, we were ambushed by a completely different idea.
The trouble with buying five regular bookcases and just lining 'em up was that the edges looked silly. The double-thicknesses in the middle looked odd, and the space between the ends and the walls rightly looked like you were half-arsing the job. But these glorious inside-out puppies were a different thing entirely. No edges! It's like open plan shelving or something! As soon as we saw one on display in the store, we knew that maybe, just maybe, we'd found our option.
They've turned out beautifully.
To be honest, I also love the modern, unconventional look of them. Especially in our front room - which is "the grown-up room", which has some beautiful old furniture and the piano and a very respectable entertaining feel - they give a nice juxtaposition of something different.
And they can hold our entire A-Z fiction+ collection (also incorporating popular non-fiction, but "serious" non-fiction has its own shelf upstairs) with sooooo much beautiful room left for MORE BOOKS.
The next problem? Bookends. I cannot believe how difficult they are to find, and suddenly we need ten of the damn things...
Originally posted on Dreamwidth
I said, "Because we've had to stop buying books because there's no room. I want bookshelves. I want a whole room of bookshelves."
(They looked at me like I was a really strange person. I get that a lot.)
Long story short: we'd been bracing ourselves to spend thousands of dollars on a built-in bookcase for our front room, when at the Boxing Day sales, while hunting for something else entirely, we were ambushed by a completely different idea.
The trouble with buying five regular bookcases and just lining 'em up was that the edges looked silly. The double-thicknesses in the middle looked odd, and the space between the ends and the walls rightly looked like you were half-arsing the job. But these glorious inside-out puppies were a different thing entirely. No edges! It's like open plan shelving or something! As soon as we saw one on display in the store, we knew that maybe, just maybe, we'd found our option.
They've turned out beautifully.
To be honest, I also love the modern, unconventional look of them. Especially in our front room - which is "the grown-up room", which has some beautiful old furniture and the piano and a very respectable entertaining feel - they give a nice juxtaposition of something different.
And they can hold our entire A-Z fiction+ collection (also incorporating popular non-fiction, but "serious" non-fiction has its own shelf upstairs) with sooooo much beautiful room left for MORE BOOKS.
The next problem? Bookends. I cannot believe how difficult they are to find, and suddenly we need ten of the damn things...
Originally posted on Dreamwidth