Remember this?
The glory of an empty wall.
And these?
Lonely, shelfless books, left to fend for themselves in brown paper bags.
Wall, meet books. Books, meet wall. NEW BOOKSHELVES ARE IN THE HOUSE!
Our great and glorious bookshelf-building project commenced this weekend, and I’m so happy, I probably glow.
Here’s what’s happened so far:
An unimpressive pile of boxes? Think again. Treasure lurks within.
Step 1: The nice Ikea delivery people dropped off these skinny, unassuming cardboard boxes.
World’s best 10-year-old assembler of shelving units.
Step 2: With some skilled help, we begin sticking pegs into holes and other challenging carpentry tasks.
That’s one, one, one bookshelf up against the wall.
Step 3: The first is done! Four more to go. Can we do it?
Going strong! Up to three!
Step 4: The master builder (aka, my husband) gets involved. We live in earthquake country, so no furniture installation is complete without wall brackets and other fun anti-falling-down measures.
FIVE! The magic number is FIVE!
Step 5: Built, mounted, dusted, and ready! Now all we need are some books. Where can we get some of those?
Where to start?
Oh, yeah, we’ve got books.
The first shelf.
An auspicious moment: placing the very first set of books on the very first shelf. I felt like saying a quick Shehechiyanu (it’s a Jewish thing). Pride of place went to my various graphic novel collections, which have been languishing in undignified piles for far too long. Love ya, Buffy! You too, Fables! Welcome home!
Shaking with excitement or exhaustion? Or just poor photography skills? Either way, it’s a glorious sight!
Et voila! I plan to spend the next several day sorting and shelving. What joy! And just in the nick of time, too. Tomorrow night is the Big Book Sale of the public library, and I can’t imagine that I’ll be coming home empty handed.
I HAVE SHELVES! I feel like a kid in a candy store. Time to go indulge!
Bookshelf Fantasies 
WOW. What I wouldn’t give to have an entire wall dedicated to books. Looks great. 🙂
Thanks! Sadly, I realize that it’s been almost a year since I put up the shelves and they’re still really disorganized. I keep meaning to spend time on this… and just never seem to get to it. My books are just organized by “feel” at this point — so Stephen King lives near Joe Hill and Neil Gaiman, and Jim Butcher is on the shelf next to Patricia Briggs… So random.