MOAR BOOKCASES

Yesterday I had a work flip-out. You all probably are tired of hearing about my constant fight for space (not against Tim, but against myself) — the ceramic studio used to be a book room, and slowly over the last two years I’ve had to double- and triple-stack mass market paperbacks, throw some out, turn sideways, and completely ruin my alphabetization-by-author bookshelf (EXHIBIT A) in order to store finished ceramics (EXHIBIT B). Part of this was alleviated by moving the glazes I use most often into my office, where I was glazing anyway (EXHIBIT C). But it’s gotten to the point where I really can’t stack things any more. Either I’ve reached the height on the small shelves and literally can not put anything on top of the piece on the shelf, or if it’s a taller shelf I could put something there but everything is stacked so precariously that one more thing is going to cause everything to topple over. So I’ve expanded to putting things on my pouring surface (EXHIBIT D)… except that means I don’t have room to pour. I can pour about six molds at a time, max.

So I need to move those finished ceramics off my pouring counter. The only cat-free place I can keep them is in that room… which means the books are going to have to go. I don’t have a bookshelf to put them on. That means I need to acquire one. The only place I can really put one big enough to hold all the mass market paperbacks is in the hallway… where there is already a reasonably-sized bookcase that holds all my CDs (EXHIBIT E). I do have another place in the house where I could put that, but I’d have to move a couple of small things around, including some framed artwork for which I’d have to find another place.

Pretty much the only way to get a bookshelf is to (a) buy one or (b) build one. My husband is a master-class maker (I was going to link to a bunch of pictures as examples of things That Poor Man can do, but then this post would have about six million more pictures; suffice to say that he learned from this man, and Bill should be proud of how Tim has turned out). But just because he can pretty much do anything he can put his mind do, that doesn’t mean I want to intrude on his weekend off.

So for about six months I’ve been waffling back and forth on buying a paperback sized shelf (more money than I wanted to spend, and it seems to me that the quality of bookshelves out there for sale are more about saying it’s a pretty shelf rather than being functional…  and if I buy used and local, I’ve got to figure out how to strap it to the roof of my Saturn and get it home). I would look online, pricing shelves that could be mailed to me, until I got discouraged and depressed. But yesterday, when I could only pour five molds, I flipped out. I decided that I was just going to go to the store and buy a bunch of boards and stack them using either bricks, concrete blocks, or other books.

Tim came out into the hallway while I was moving the CDs, and asked what I was up to. I told him, and in a really, really nice way, he said that was the dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas and why didn’t he just build me a bookshelf. I didn’t want to take up his weekend, I said; or worse, a couple of weekends. I didn’t want to suck up his time. I didn’t want to be a bother.

So guess what was completely installed by about 9 PM last night? Awww yeah. It’s pressure-treated wood, so it needs to dry out before I stack books on it, and there’s a little bit of nail touch-up work that Tim needs to do, but DA-YUM, Y’ALL! That Poor Man made me a bad-ass bookcase in about seven hours. We started talking about it around 2 in the afternoon. My friend Stephanie came over right about then to hang out for a bit — by the the time she’d left, Tim had measured everything and drawn a mock-up in Visio. We went to Lowes, bought wood, came home, and cut all the pieces. The photo above is about when we broke for dinner. After dinner we finished putting it together. More photos later, especially when I’ve slapped a bunch of books on it!

PS. What? Doesn’t every household own an air compressor?