Newest shelves

Several of the Booksncoffeehaus readers asked me to post pictures of the (originally unfinished) whitewashed shelves I recently worked on, so here they are~

This is where our wasteful floor-to-ceiling corner fireplace used to be. Hubby and our 10 and 14 yo kids sledge-hammered it out this summer. It had leaked time and again where the chimney and roofline came together, and hubby faithfully kept repairing it over the thirteen years that we've lived here. Hubster and the kiddos also put down the laminate floor...all while I was in Tennessee! I came home to a nice surprise. Summer school money is nearly always used to buy one improvement for the house each summer, since we can pay cash as we go. We'd owned the laminate flooring for about a year before it got put in, (grin). Such are the home improvement projects in our old house :-). If you click and enlarge the photo, you'll notice that the wall needs to be sanded in a place or two, then I need to do the faux finish that is on the rest of the LR wall. Maybe that will get done over this Christmas break, along with replacing the base trim of all the walls in the room.

I spent the week of fall break last month whitewashing, sanding, and brushing on layers of poly-crylic to these. Hubby put them together as soon as I got them finished! Yeah! These contain mostly Americana, Nature books, bookbinding and restoration books, my Charlotte Mason and Edith Schaeffer books, some art and a Children's classic set (old Scribners set, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth). *All* of the furniture and goodies were found at thrift stores (even the computer armoire), other than the unfinished bookshelves. Most all the books are used, as well. Some free! Our twenty volume set of The Annals of America was only $10 total. Most of hubby's Library of America books were bargain, and some were free for his contribution of reveiwing some of them for the complany.

Two of my exhibit photos from Izamal, Yucatán are resting up against the doors. I have yet to decide which wall I'm going to put them up on. It's a matter of wall-space for bookshelves, or wall-space for photos, etc.

Do you see my big, furry Tigger in the lower left-hand corner? This is the largest room in our one-story cottage, but I love it. I am thankful for what we do have. Making better use of some of our vertical wall space helps us maximize the smaller rooms in the rest of the house.

Maybe I'll have this place totally organized and efficient by the time the kiddos graduate!
...I really do prefer organized (but warm and homey) efficiency. I confess, it does not come to me naturally. Decorating does, but keeping things organized...well...Those who know me very well know my struggle. But yes, I do INDEED prefer it, but have a ways to go...

I tend to be a messy worker whether it's writing and research, bookbinding or quilting. I tend to spread out a project and like to see all my resources visibly while I work. It's out of sight, out of mind, for me. If we had a workroom in the house, or workshop in the backyard, it would help, immensely!