Library Full of Books

I have been yearning to have a library my entire life and when we bought our new house I knew that this Sitting Room off of our bedroom would do the trick.

Before Photo

Before Photo

Before Photo

My husband and I borrowed my In-laws mini-van over the weekend and headed to our "local" Ikea (actually 1 1/2 hours away) in search of Expedit storage systems.  After writing down all of the locations of the various units we wanted, we headed down to the warehouse and began loading up our cart full of very heavy boxes.  Then disaster struck.  Ikea was completely out of the 5x5 Expedit system in white.  I had my heart set on the white for our library and after a few tears (pregnancy hormones for sure) I decided that the birch option would work just fine.  I think that it was just a shock to my pregnant self that they didn't have what I wanted and I just needed to sit on the idea of something different and let it sink in for a few minutes before really making up my mind.  By thoughtful (and rational) husband even offered to drive up again to by the white unit when it is back in stock, but, tearful as I was, I realized that was a silly thing to make him do.  The birch unit went right on our cart and away we went.

Alphabetizing like crazy!

It's a tree house, not a fort!

We put the unit together the next day while our son napped and were pleased that it didn't really take that long.  Next came the fun part for me.  We pulled all of my many boxes of books out of storage and I began alphabetizing them.

Logan liked making a "tree house" out of the newly emptied boxes.  I have no idea why he insisted it was a tree house and not a fort.  Look below for the finished room...

I'm really happy with the final result.  I can already tell that I need to evaluate the size of my book collection as there is no room for growth at this point, but I'll worry about that later!  We stacked two units for a higher bookcase and anchored the unit to the wall for safety.  Logan has already added a few of his books to the library which I think is super adorable.