Reader's Delight

Have I ever mentioned that we have books? Lots and lots of books? And then a few more books? Lots of books.

Well, until recently we haven't exactly had them arranged/displayed/organized very well. We had one bookcase in our room that looks really good, a two little bookcases in two of the bedrooms filled mainly with kids books, and the big bookcase in the den that Leslie's dad made that was completely full. Yes, completely full - top to bottom, two rows deep, all usable space filled with words on paper type full.

We decided to make a trip down to IKEA and expand our bookcase collection in order to fix the overcrowding situation. We picked out three large bookcases that perfectly fill a wall in the den. We loaded up the car, headed home, and were assembling shelves in no time. They were pretty easy to put together and it didn't take long for us to have them all built. Then it was a matter of getting the books organized. Leslie took all the books off the overloaded bookcase (along with a few boxes of books that she had hidden away in a closet upstairs) and figured out how to best spread them between the new and old bookcases. After a lot of book rearranging and moving things up and down the stairs (the old bookcase is now residing upstairs above the garage), we got things settled pretty well. There's some room for expansion, some decorative items (with more to be added), and a whole lot of books.

We also got some neat little lights to go along with the bookcases. They all tie into one power cord and I got a remote that allows us to turn them on remotely (hence the name...), as using the switch on the power cord would be pretty hard since it's behind the bookcases. They installed relatively easily and create a great effect.

That white box is the remote receiver... pretty cool stuff.

And yes, that's a Beaker doll that we got at Disney.

And that's how we gave the den a whole new look and loads more function. It's a great change and we're very happy with how it turned out. Hopefully this will be enough book storage for at least a little while. But, in the meantime, thanks for reading and have a good weekend!