Teatime in my Garden

Shelves and other stuff

Been a while since I last did an update.

The children and I have continued our reading and they have completed their Summer reading program for the library. We have enjoyed the Tuesday activities they have done and found them very interesting. This coming week we learn to draw a dragon. The next one after that is their wrap up party for the summer program.

The other big project has been multi-part. It started with a simple rearrangement of the kitchen since we were changing the type of drinking water we do. It took quite a few days for me to really figure out how I wanted it. Just about the time I get close to finishing that, we decide to get some new bookshelves.

These are from a local bookstore that just closed. We had measured them and realized they were too tall to fit in our house. However, Devin was sure that they would be fairly easy to modify if we could get enough to replace our current shelves. We put our name on the list and ended up getting 4 large ones and one odd one they decided to just throw in. Well it was quite a saga of transporting them one at a time tied on top of my car to get them all home. They sat on our lawn while we figured out how to attack them. The following day(Saturday) after borrowing a skill saw and some sawhorses from friends we got started. We had to unscrew the bottoms, cut off 3" from the metal strip that held the shelves with my dremel, and then use the saw to chop off the bottom 3 inches, trim some of the trim with a handsaw and then screw it all back together. We did not finish them all until Sunday. Sunday evening we had them all cleaned up and started the rearrangement. We replaced 7 tall Sauder laminate shelves with 4 floor to ceiling wood shelves. By the time we hit the 4th shelf we had a system pretty much down. We would preload the shelves and empty the old bookshelf, then move it out to the carport. After the shelves were loaded and old ones moved out, the floor, edges, and walls would all be cleaned and vacuumed. The new shelf was moved into place, secured to the wall and the shelves with books put into place.

We ended up gaining a lot more room than we thought we would in this process. The game table no longer feels cramped. We moved several of the shorter shelves into the dining room and we now have enough room there for everything. We ended up then moving the livingroom around a bit to help with the new spacious feeling. I am much happier with the rearrangement and everything is staying cleaner. We even moved the lamps around and added a small reading lamp.

We still had an empty corner where we were planning on putting shelves to store all our games. The problem is that none of our walls are perfectly square. We could not just cut the shelves and hope they fit. I found some foam core and slowly cut out mock up shelves until they fit in the corner securely. I then traced them onto some plywood. Devin then cut them out and I sanded them all down. After sanding those and the small wood that would hold the shelves up they all looked much better. I had already measured and leveled lines on to the wall for where the shelves would go up. It still took a bit of time to screw in the supports for the shelves as the space was small. All the work was worth it though. The games all fit on the shelves and it even looks pretty good!

To see some before and after pictures you can go here: Library/Livingroom Redo!

Oh we also went on a hike a couple of weeks ago. We started out at our house but ended up doing a short hike along the river at a local park. It was a nice 3+ mile hike/walk and we all enjoyed it. We still plan on hitting the falls hopefully by the end of summer. I sure hope I remember my camera.