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Sunday, May 20, 2012

Creating Space

It is no secret that we live in a little house. A very little house. It's technically a unit and we have no yard and a teensy weensy little living area. So when it comes to fitting everything in that we need (yes, need, no matter what my husband says!) things tend to become a little cluttered. So when we had to create a nursery for Willow, out came the computer and bookshelf into the living room.

I did compromise with David and got rid of an entire bookshelf of books, but I couldn't part with all of them and insisted that we needed to keep at least one bookshelf. It looked awful. It was overloaded with books stacked every which way and was on a bizarre angle in order to allow access to the power point behind it. The girls would constantly pull all of their books off the bottom shelf, causing a collapse of my precariously built towers of books. Plus, it was the first thing anyone saw when they walked in the front door. Not aesthetically pleasing at all! Something had to be done. Quickly and very, very cheaply.

David took our simply rectangular bookshelf and pulled it apart. He reconstructed it in 5 boxes and only had to buy a little bit of extra wood. We attached it to the wall and painted it with white exterior paint we had left over from painting the house. We figured you can never have too much mould protection on anything up here! David then brought a giant mower box home from work and we cut panels to fit into the back of the boxes (let's just say we weren't the neatest of painters!)


In order to make our cardboard long enough, we cut two pieces and held them together with wooden skewers and masking tape. I was quite happy to cut them 'near enough's good enough' because we were going to cover them with fabric, but David busted me. So I let him take over.


Even the girls hindered him!


The fabric was on sale at Spotlight and it's not very clear, but they are vintage keys in photo frames. I was kind of going for a 'key to knowledge' theme. The contrasting green was chosen by David and a friend of ours, Jay from Birdie and Bug, who both have a better eye for colour than I!


And we put the books back up! I think it looks much better than before and we have been able to put the girls' toybox under it, creating even more space! So now when people walk in, they see my books as a feature, not as an after thought. The way books should be viewed!

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