Booking space

And here it is done. Lots of book space!

The north wall to the corner cupboard:


Continuing around to the west wall on the left of the picture:


And on further to the door and the south wall:


The finish isn't brilliant: there are a few clumsy joins and gaps, but it's fit for purpose, and the acres of books should take attention away from them.

And we also have the snazzy new cupboard for the fuse box and phone stuff:


I'll put up a final photo when the books are in.

Carcass on

Here we are at the end of day one in the Library with the carcasses more or less in place:

This is the run along the north wall, with the corner cupboard towards the left of the picture.

On the south wall they've punched neatly through the backboard for the sockets and rotated the lightswitch easily, which is great.

The shelving over the door is a job for tomorrow.

And also tomorrow, all going well, the tulip wood shelves themselves:

What wood you do?

With the project running a week or so behind schedule we got a visit from the joiner with a question about the shelves. We had opted for solid tulip wood for these and he was concerned that, as a natural material, it might be prone to warping as it matures. His recommendation was birch ply, and he brought samples of both to the house.

We considered the choice but have decided to stick with the solid wood. The thicker shelves just look better, and we don't mind a bit of wobbliness as long as they stay intact. So that was settled.

Today we learned that this coming Thursday is our installation date. The final items are being removed from the room ahead of the big day.

On the clock

That's about four to six weeks now, isn't it? A call to the joiners says they're running a bit late with everything but still expect to get the job done in one of the last two weeks of July. It'll take two days to install, apparently, so I should get a nice halfway photoshoot.

Details, details

The joiners have revised their quote to include backing on the shelves so we're going ahead with that and have paid a deposit. Next thing is to pick a colour, or rather go and find a real life example of their house off-white and confirm it's OK. Once that's done the lead time is four to six weeks, apparently, so we could have everything wrapped by the end of July.

More news when we have a start date.

Picture books

The joinery company took the measurements and we discussed what we wanted. Yesterday the quote arrived with some roughly-sketched plans:

The proposed cost is reasonable, and has the shelves over the door, but oddly does not include backing on the shelves. Not that there's anything wrong with the colour of the walls, but we think that might look odd. No electrical work is included either so I guess we're on our own regarding the lightswitch.

We'll make up our mind what we want to do and get back to them.

A quick go-around

Significant clearing has taken place in the library since the last post. It's not completely empty, but there's enough space for someone to take measurements and discuss options.

Our plan involves starting the shelving here in the north-east corner, starting just clear of the curtain rail, which will also leave the sockets by the window (just visible under the curtain) free:

From here they'll run along the north wall to the north-west corner:

The house lacks tall storage for brushes and mops so the plan is to have a tall cupboard built into this corner.

The shelving will then continue along the west wall until it meets the south one:

The easiest and most logical thing to do here is run the shelves right into the corner and then start again on the other side of the door, along the south wall. So we're hoping not to do that. Instead we'd like shelves above the door, meaning the uppermost shelves on the west wall will stop short, allowing the ones over the door to meet them. That's the vague plan anyway. We'll see if it can be made work.

And finally the south wall. The shelves will run right into the corner here:

They shouldn't interfere with the sockets on the east wall but we'll need to punch holes in the backing for the ones on the south wall. For the light switch we're thinking of pivoting it 90° so it's embedded in the side of the shelving and immediately facing you when you come in the door. Again, it's another fancy which may not work out in real life.

We've sent invitations out to five companies so far but the response has been surprisingly poor. Only one seems genuinely interested, and it's the company who did our kitchen and wardrobes so we'd be quite happy to have them back.

And you're back in the room

After the completion of the fireplace almost two years ago, the last remaining unfinished piece of the renovation work is the library.

The builders left it in 2008 all neat like this:


But over the years it became something of a junk room, accumulating furniture, papers and more books than the bookcases could handle. It made making a start on getting it shelved properly even more of a chore.


At last, however, we're getting going. After this picture was taken the books began to be packed up and the bookcases moved to other parts of the house. Once there's room to run a tape measure across the walls we can get a joiner in to measure up and give us a quote.