Monday, April 11, 2011

Bookcases revamped

I went through the masses of books my husband and I have about a year ago, our bookcases looked pretty good. For a while.

Then . . . you know how it goes. More books get shoved in, kids put their toys on the shelves, tall shelves get used as spots to put stuff the kids can't get to, and this is what you get:

Pretty disgraceful, huh?

I'd been meaning to get to the bookshelves for a while, and then this post from the lovely Michaela Noelle was the final impetus I needed to get going. After a long process of weeding out some books and packing them up for storage in the garage, this was the result:


Still a lot of books but my husband and I are avid readers.

Here is one of the Fantasy shelves, with appropriately fantastic gargoyle in the middle:


Our Gardening books look lovely with pretty yellow ranunculus!


Two handcrafted home accents my husband got at a craft fair accent our - what else - Home shelf:
I'm pretty happy with the results - which meant four grocery bags full of books got put away in the garage. And some random items that somehow (ahem) got thrown on the bookshelves, like bouncing balls, marbles, the case for a handheld game, etc. found new homes.

Now I only have the kids' bookshelves to deal with. Oy.

4 comments:

Donna said...

This looks super nice Claudia!! Wow..I'm really impressed by how much you accomplished and how well you styled your book cases.

Doesn't it feel wonderful to have space? Bookshelves looks so friendly when the books have a little room to breathe.

But it's so heart wrenching to part with your books isn't it?

I talked about Dickens and Tea today on my first 'weekly' newsletter.

Wow..your post makes me feel like I REALLY need to go work on my pantry. Your before photos don't look even remotely as bad as my pantry. But I do know you had to work through a lot of stuff there. What an accomplishment!

xo
Donna @ Comin' Home

Alicia@ eco friendly homemaking said...

Wow what a great job you did. They look so nice and organized! You have made me want to get our straightened up!!

the paris apartment said...

It's amazing what a little elbow grease can do! Looks great! I love the yellow flowers!

Unknown said...

I feel you did a great job there. Those look incredible! The deal is that hardcover books look elegant but they take up so much room on shelves.