I’m decorating my bookshelves

My bookshelves are starting to come together so nicely.

Want to see what I’ve accomplished?

I’ve been plugging along, locating boxes of books in our garage, hauling them into the house, and unboxing them.

I’m having a blast!    I’m taking my time, and progress has been deliberately slow.

Reason being that as I unbox books, I’ve been saving a list of what I own to a spreadsheet.

You may think I’m nuts, and I admit I don’t normally make inventory lists like this, but I own so many books (probably close to 200?) that it’s hard to keep track of them all in my head.  Especially since I like to buy multiple books from favorite authors.

Which means:  a few times in recent months, I’ve bought books I already own.

Whoopsy!

Conclusion: the list has become necessary.

As I’ve been unboxing books that have been in storage for over two years, I’ve caught book fever again.

I’ve read two books in the past week or so.

I know a lot of you may say, “I read that many all the time!” … but I usually only devote an hour (at most) a day to reading, which means I may get through two books a month.  If I’m lucky.    I’ve got way too many home projects to justify reading  during the day, but I’m finding that I’m reading much more at night rather than watching TV with my husband.

I also started reading book reviews and award and “best of” lists on sites like Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble,  The Man Booker  International Prize, The Pulitzer, and so forth.   I’ve now got a list of books I want to buy, too!

I can’t wait to go shopping at Half Price Books next time we’re in Austin!  (I love a bargain!   Some of the best books I’ve ever read for from the dollar bin.)

By the way, if you love to read fiction like I do, I’d love to see your book recommendations .. and vice versa.   Just add me as a friend on Goodreads or comment below.

Anyway.

I’m having fun and glad I’m making my lists.

When I first started arranging my books on the shelves, I did it completely randomly.  I found that I wasn’t happy with all the different colors competing with the yellow beadboard.

See what I mean?  It was just way too much random color going on.

So then I played around with covering them in brown paper bags.

I don’t know how you feel about this.  It seems a little silly, I know, but it certainly achieves a uniform look.  Of course, the book covers would have to be labeled with the titles and authors.

I quickly decided this was waaaay too much tedious work.  Plus, when I’m searching my library for the next book to read, I like to read what the story’s about, so who wants to unwrap and rewrap books?

I finally decided to arrange the books by color, like white, gold, orange, blue, black, red, and so on.

I’m satisfied with the way that’s looking.

In addition to unboxing books, I’ve begun to unpack some of my antique and collectible treasures that have also been in storage for so long.   Too long.

It feels like Christmas to unwrap and rediscover so many of my things that have been hidden away for so long.

I collect dogs and I mostly display them in one cabinet, but some will live on my bookshelves like my dog bookends or some of my larger dogs.

Some of my architectural pieces will also live on my shelves, like these pieces from our Jacksonville project.

I also collect greyhound pieces – a nod to my high school mascot.

I own a few old lunchboxes.  I love their shape, and they remind me of old wallpaper.

My brother, sister, and I used to play jacks as kids.  This piece reminds of that.

This old potato chip tin is fun and may go live in my kitchen one day.

We’ll see.  I’ll probably be moving things around for quite a while.

I have 4 more book boxes to go, but unboxing them …. well, that will be delayed a little longer.  Reason being that Miss Brilliant here used the 4 boxes as a stand for another big stack of lumber that I cleaned and brought inside.

My husband thinks I’m a little silly bringing all this lumber inside the house, but my attitude is:  once I spend days washing filthy lumber, I want to make sure it doesn’t get dirty (or wet) again outside!

So I can’t get to the boxes until after we install the wood.  Yes, I guess I could restack the wood somewhere else and free the books ….

Hey …. that sounds a little odd, doesn’t it?  Free the Books, People!

Anyway, I don’t really want to do that.    It’s too much busy work.

Plus, we’re planning to install the wood pretty soon anyway.

I’ll share later where this old groove board is going to live.

Anyway, slow but sure.  That’s the project …. and describes me, in general.

The bookshelves are not even close to being arranged the way I like, so I’ll share photos of the bookshelves when they’re finally decorated and done.

Hope you have a great weekend!

 

******************************

I always look forward to reading your comments. Thank you for taking the time to leave one!