Someone asked today about how many books one might have in each room of one's house. I love books, and we have approx 1 buttload of books. Er... maybe 2 buttloads.
Breakdown of current book totals in each household location:
Kitchen: 8 (all cookbooks, several from library)
Living room: 161 (not counting magazines, photo albums, or yearbooks)
Dining room: 5 (library books that are waiting to be returned)
Office: uncountable zillions, literally
Hallway bathroom: 0
Bedroom: 6 (one on each bedside table, 4 stacked on top of dresser)
Master bathroom: 0 (we are not read-while-pooping people)
So, when we bought our house, we wanted to turn the second bedroom into an office. We don't have kids and don't plan to have kids, and we do have multitudinous office-y type stuff (computer, mucho misc computer accessories, books, files, etc). When we first moved in, we figured we would make it an office/library, with a computer desk and shelves. Lots and lots of shelves. Shelves covering at least two walls. Big walls.
We briefly considered making it a spare bedroom for guests, but quickly said Fuck that! and bought a sleeper sofa.
We looked at hiring a carpenter person to come in and build bookcases. We had a designer give us an estimate to design custom shelves and a built-in desk. We priced those bare wood shelving units that you can paint/stain yourself. All of a sudden, it's a year and a half later and what have we got in our office? Big piles of boxes of books! At this point, dusty boxes. Ugh.
We are really not thinking we will stay here forever. We plan to sell this place and buy in a better - or at least, different - location in the next 5-10 years. We decided that putting in anything permanent would probably not help us when it comes to the resale value, since there are only two bedrooms. So, what's the obvious choice?
Cheap-o crapcases from Wal-Mart! Woo! The funny thing is, we have so many books that we are going to have to buy like 6 of them. We have one of those electric screwdriver dealies, so it shouldn't take too terribly long to put them together.
Next week we are both on vacation all week to A) celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary, B) buy a half-dozen shelving units from Wal-Mart and put them together, C) enjoy many happy hours sorting and alphabetizing our beloved books, and D) other miscellaneous home improvement projects including, but not limited to, painting the master bath.
Yay!
