Books, books, and more books

Sorry for the silence around the blog lately. Things have pretty hectic! I started a new job last week, working for a marketing company. After working full time out of my home office since September, it's been a big adjustment to get back into a real work environment. Even though we've had plenty of projects around the house, I haven't really had the time to devote to finishing them up.

One project that I did finish (for now anyway) was building a bookcase/storage unit for the guest bedroom. I had mentioned in my last post that we've been picking away at making this room less of a storage dumping ground, and we're still working on it.

Since moving in, one of the biggest problems we faced was dealing with the boxes and boxes of books that we had piled up. The bookcase in my office was being used for work materials at the time, so now that I'm no longer working from home, I was able to clear that out and finally unpack our books!



It might not seem like much of a difference, but I broke down at least 8 or 9 boxes that had been piled up in the guest bedroom. Getting rid of those was a major breath of fresh air!

Because we have tons of books (even some textbooks left over from college...) this one bookcase wasn't going to provide enough storage. We had some scrap wood left over from a different project and it was just sitting in a pile in the middle of the guest bedroom floor, totally in the way:



Not very inviting... you can see why we're working on this room! Branden put the heavy planks to good use and built a long bookcase for us to tuck into the corner of the room underneath the eave.



After it was built, I primed the knots before painting.



Side note: I think the paint would've covered fine even if I didn't prime the knots, but whatevs. I didn't want to take a chance so I figured I'd do the quick extra step.

Two coats of white paint later, and this was the result:





It's nothing earth-shattering, but it provides a ton of much-needed storage space for the guest bedroom. We already had the wood, nails, primer, and paint on hand so the best part about this project is that it was f-r-e-e! Gotta love using what you have.

We also got a free hand-me-down area rug that helped cozy up the room a ton. The next step in here is a futon (we want to be able to sleep people if need be). I also have a spray paint art project in the works that I hope to share soon, if all goes to plan!