Yup. One of my lifelong dreams is about to come true.
When I was a little kid, I shared a bookshelf with my brother and sister. Later, I had a whole standing bookshelf all to myself. In my first apartment, I had the classic cinder-block and board shelves. My first marital home was a bungelow without room for even the cinder-blocks and boards. At that house, my books were kept in boxes under the bed, on the closet floor and in the attic. Later, in larger rented houses, I had various make-shift shelving solutions, all of them bulging and sagging and none of them at all aesthetically pleasing. I have always wanted a real library – a room for my books to live in comfort and space…
Now, in my beautiful, beautiful new house, I’m gonna have one. My dad is here, along with all his power tools, and the garage is filled with lumber. We’ve drawn up our plans – I’m going to have one solid wall of floor-to-ceiling shelves and the adjoining wall will be floor-to-ceiling shelves except for the two windows on that wall. And the two windows? They’re going to have window seats! Won’t that be cool? I’m also going to have a free standing set of shelves placed in front of my big computer desk in the middle of the room. I just checked the plans and added it up – I’m going to have slightly over 126 linear feet of shelves! Whoopee! I can’t wait!
Lucky Jess (who has 16 different etiquette books telling her that it is tasteless to brag about personal possessions, but who just couldn’t help herself)
Awww I want a library too! Right now I don’t even have cinderblocks and boards, but then I also only have about 1/8th of my book collection here. Soon… soon…
That’s one reason I have an eye open for a 3-bedroom house. One room will be my library. Unfortunately my books (about 15 boxes of them) are in storage until that happens.
Dude, I feel you, as the kids say. I’ve always wanted a house with a two-story library like Dr. What’s his name in My Fair Lady–man that place looks cool.
Your window seats definitely sound like a nice touch. You should call Starbucks and see if they’ll open up at least a kiosk in one of your library’s corners. Seems they’ll put those places up anywhere (and if I weren’t too lazy I’d link to the Onion article about the Starbucks that opened up in the bathroom of another Starbucks).
I know the feeling well. When we moved into our current house I repeatedly and loudly made the point to my wife that the unused little bedroom in the basement was going to be my library. I’m afraid I made quite a nuisance of myself. For once I got my way. Now its books floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Heh heh heh.
Oh, man, I’m jealous. That’s actually my next big home project–one of the reasons I love this house is that it came with this small living room with French doors and 10’ ceilings (where our old apartment bookshelves look puny, being only 6’). When I save up the money, I’m installing full cabinets and bookshelves up to the ceiling, and windowseat/cabinets under the wall that is mostly window. Save, save, save…better hurry, the books are overflowing…
ooooooh, window seats! i love window seats! just perfect for reading on a rainy day.
one room in my house is dedicated to my books. i buy bookboxes from levenger when i can. i hope to be able to line the room with them eventually. until then the book boxes are mixed in with other generic bookcases.
wow, built to order book shelves and window seats. colour me green.
Lucky lucky you. I wanted a library so much that when I built my dollhouse I made a library–it had one of those ladders on wheels, and I made 600 little books out of leather scraps wrapped around little blocks of wood. Then I used to fantasize about shrinking so I could get into my library. But I still want a real one.