Live-Blogging the Library

Final Update, Monday, August 27, 2012

I may never come out. Paul Simon's lyrics haunt me, "I have my books/And my poetry to protect me;/ I am shielded in my armor,/Hiding in my room,/Safe within my womb. . . ." Good thing I'm not that anti-social. But I do enjoy sitting and pulling this or that old book I love from the shelves. I may cut back on my blogging as I read more. We'll see. . . .

Even the "comfy chair" fits in the room well.

The closet is for family history materials.

Some of my oldest and most beloved books are in front of me at the desk.

-----------------
A library! I've always loved the public ones. And since reading Ray Bradbury, I had to have my own! I've collected books since my youth and had some great bookshelves, including the cinder block variety in my teenage and college (and young married) years. But I have never had a room solely dedicated to books. Now, I do.

One of the advantages of kids leaving home is that it opens up a little space. I had a college son get married this Spring (and leave!) and I was excited to turn that bedroom into a library! Then my daughter came back from college for the summer. Fine. We love her. These past two weeks, my freshman-age son left for college early to start band camp. And yesterday, we took my daughter back down to Provo. Our remaining nester is our 15-year-old who moved into the basement bedroom and we've been shuffling furniture the last two days.

I've been taking pictures, principally so I could remember where my books were on the shelves. But I just thought I might as well live-blog even if I'm already a ways into the process. I started to get emotional when I got to this point:

It's going to work!

The empty room, after a lot of cleaning, started like this:

Library Potential

Here's one of the pictures of my bookcases downstairs, somewhat in order, so I can get it back:

And here's a picture of a staging area, the newly arranged room for grandkids' sleep-overs (once the books are cleared out):

I'll update as I go along. I need frequent rests. It's tough moving this stuff up two flights of stairs. Thank heavens, I still have a 15-year-old at home! And he's a good kid. He reads books.

And here he is with the success of our first big bookcase (two more to go!)

It's not just that these bookcases are big and heavy, we have to negotiate the impossible corner:

The little landing is kinda cool -
except when you're moving things in or out of the basement

The guys that moved us in somehow got those bookcases down so I knew we could get them up. The first one wasn't easy. And there will be some expected spackling repair. I'll see if I can get a picture of us making the corner next time, but it's not exactly the time to stop for pics.

Got it:

To turn the impossible turn

Finally, all in, secured to the wall and each other. We bought these bookcases 12 years ago for a different house. And it looks like they were made to fit the new library. Time to put the books in!

It's not just the public libraries I loved. I loved the school libraries (well, I guess they're public too.) I loved the librarians and their kind sharing and guiding even if I did like to find my own books. And I really loved the bookmobile! I don't know if there was a regular schedule. It just seemed to appear magically. It's bookmobile day! I have acquired some of those books I used to check out from the bookmobile. Now I will have a magical place just down the hall.

Final shots to come when the books are all in. I have a few more things to set up besides the books, too.