A New Project

Rarely do I get excited about decorating/designing parts of the house. Normally I go along with whatever Robyn wants to do (which luckily turns out great because she has good vision). But the other day she sent me a link from the Ready Made website (I don't have the link anymore sorry) of an outdoor library. It was more of a "look how great this would be some day" sort of thing. But then I started thinking, "hey, we've got room in the garage for a library!" But that's kind of ghetto and that's when I came up with a brilliant plan (yes, brilliant). On multiple occasions people have asked what we're going to do with Robyn's studio space in the house now that she's moved into a real studio. Some have suggested a weight room or a tool/work room. But clearly library is the correct answer. Oh man, so excited.

I'll be documenting the process here. So for starters here's what the room looks like now, with a few random pieces of furniture from Robyn's stuff and a lot of photo junk hanging around doing nothing.





The space isn't huge but then I don't have a huge quantity of books so it should due. It's 10 feet by 11 feet. First thing that shall be done is the door will be taken off. Then all of the photography stuff will be removed. Holes in the walls (from nails and screws) will be patched up and then the walls and ceiling will be painted a light redish/brown. The base of the wall (you can see in picture one how the base of the wall comes out about a foot) will be painted a darker brown/red to match the shelves that will be installed. Then we shall install two rows of shelves (starting near the ceiling) that are similar to the ones in the first image. The fourth wall will have a couple of pictures and an actual short, wide book-case along it. We'll keep the coffee-table in the position it is in picture one but stain it a darker color to more closely match the paint and shelves. Then a chair will be placed on either side and another more comfortable chair will be placed next to the book-case. I'm thinking I'll put my chess board from Turkey on the coffee-table for permanent display and use as well. If we run out of book space we'll add another row of shelves on the three walls. There will probably be a standing lamp in one of the corners as well. Then we'll remove the spot lights from the ceiling and replace them with a single softer light. At that point books will be moved in and old bookshelves placed in the garage (or gotten rid of, or whatever). Oh yeah, we'll also put a darker rug down to hide most of the light carpet that is there now. I don't have the energy to recarpet and don't want to spend too much on the project. The shelves for the walls have been purchased and maybe sometime this weekend we can pick out some paint (if the shelves arrive by then).