On a Roll

I've been on a roll since the weekend, organizing and moving things around.  I've been mainly dealing with shelving and storage issues and the kids areas of books, toys, and art supplies.  I don't have any decent pictures yet of what I was up to over the weekend, but today's project was completed so expediently that I must continue my roll and blog about it.

Before we even moved into this house I spotted this idea for kids bookshelves. Vinyl rain gutters as book shelves are all over blogland, so I can't even come close to claiming this as an original idea.  Nevertheless, it is a good one, and a really cheap one. After we moved here and settled our furniture in we didn't really have the kind of wall space I wanted for that project. But just last night I was sitting in the rocker in the playroom and sort of absently staring into the closet where the toys were kept... and then at the yellow shelf loaded down with books we love but that don't get read much simply because there are so many and they're kinda tight on the shelf (and lately we've been reading mostly library books).

Anyway (phew, this is a big lead up... sorry), I decided to move the toy bin/shelf out of the closet.  The toy shelf was being rather under-utilized, and it wasn't hard to find other boxes and places for the items on it (most are still in the closet). Then the yellow book shelf moved into the closet, freeing up the other wall. (This post has some pictures that sorta show where things were before).

A quick trip to Lowes this morning for a 10' gutter and 3 end caps (they only had the right-side ones in stock; I still need to get 3 for the left).  The grand total on this project will be a whopping $18.

Don was glad to have a project for his day off and so he happily cut and mounted the shelves for me, and voila!

Those end caps help stabilize each shelf, so until I get the left-hand caps the arrangement is a little lopsided.  I am really pleased with how it all turned out.  My plan is to put out new books from our own "library" every week or so, so that they seem fresh and attractive and we can enjoy some old favorites as well as the "real" library books. 

If I can get some good pictures, I hope to introduce some new friends in my next post... stay tuned!