The shelves. The shelves that led to a complete room makeover!

I am a woman who loves power tools. How did this happen? My eyes used to glaze over when Don wanted to stop in at Home Depot. Now, I know several of the employees at the Menard's in Lincoln. One of them is convinced that I am there every time he is. He may be right.

I've been building like crazy this summer/fall. It all started with needing a shelf for boots in our new mud room (I'll post about that outcome another time). I discovered Ana White's website and thought, "Hey, if I can build a stanchion for the cows, surely I can put together a shelf!" I did, and the rest is history.

We were needing a bunch of bookshelves as we had been borrowing Don's folk's and they were going to need them back as their house gets completed. So, I found some shelves I liked and got busy countersinking some nails.


Again, I adjusted the plans a bit to better meet our needs. They are individual base and hutch units, but it all comes together nicely and look built-in. The bases are 16" deep and the hutches are 12" deep. I may someday put doors on the base units, but for now, I'm happy.

The hardest part about these shelves was that the wall they were going on had the only heat register and 3 of the 4 outlets. If I didn't do something about it, we were going to be cold in there. Cold and using extension cords.

So, I used some duct tape and some insulated cardboard to build out underneath the shelf so that I could extend the "ductwork" and put a register on the front of the bookcase. It isn't perfect, as the picture shows, because I had to improvise a little...maybe a little caulk would hide the gap though. The other thing I did was to run wires underneath one of the bookcases so that I could put outlets on the front. The big deal is that everything worked! I didn't even cause any fuses to blow!

And new, white bookshelves required me to paint the walls and wood trim. And, put up new window treatments, and rewire the outlets & switches with white. And, put up pictures on the walls and bring in a comfy chaise lounge. The end result? A cozy new library (that doubles as a sewing room with the new sewing table I built...more on that later as well!) A library, by the way, that doesn't even hold all of our books. Back to the workbench!