I love books, like probably too much but I have no desire to change. The last year or so, it’s really been the perfect storm of books… We’ve amazingly inherited a few friends’ homeschool collections (unreal generosity here and we’re so very grateful! Homeschool friends, let me know what you need and I might have it to share, too!) Tripp decided he needed his closet space more than the books we had always stored in there (you know I couldn’t get rid of them!), I changed how we’re homeschooling for the year (meaning MORE books and and MORE trips to the Happy Book Stack) so we’ve collected more and more books. And books are just something I have trouble parting with.
This change in homeschooling, also means we need easier access to our all of our books. Some are packed up, some are in 9,000 different places… it’s not a good situation so I started dreaming of way to utilize them which shifted to a dream of a library. I thought the would mean building built-ins in the bonus room for all the school storage including books but while I feel I could DIY it, this is still not a cheap project so I started scheming something lower budget and maybe even temporary.
My first thought was some cheap short book shelves I could dress up in the guest room. This would be a great place for them and we have the space, but that didn’t really pan out for a number of reasons so I just kept dreaming (and pinning pictures of dream libraries. I have a whole board with pretty libraries of you want inspiration too)
But who can stop at pinning? I started planning. It’s never a good thing when I’m walking around the house with a tape measure and the iPad. It means I’m drawing out all the possibilities (to scale!) and pretty serious about the task. Let’s just say that no space was off limits for how I could pack in book storage. (But let me add the with an open floorpan there is less space to do such a thing)
The more I measured, estimated costs and planned, one space emerged as the best contender. This really small room off the bonus room. It’s a treasure of a space. It was marketed as an “office,” in the floor plan but it has served so many purposes for us… Toy overflow in that season, storage, Robb’s office when he worked from home (yes it was teeny but he needed a place to be on the phone all day so it worked), a makeshift “workout room” of sorts, even a bathroom for one of Tripp’s little friends one day (eww) … but because it had no set purpose, it would end up being a “catchall” or a better way to put it… disaster. I’ve done so many little things to make it a better space over the years, but it constantly evolved and nothing ever stuck for long. But now is it’s time to shine and be who he was meant to be. I don’t want any space in our house to not serve us well.
Here's the blank space when we moved in....
And here is where I once made it cute and functional for a time but it didn't last long. I kind of started this process before I took a real life "before" picture.
This is why I picked this space and how I convinced myself we “needed,” a Library, but we all know a project isn’t as easy as just deciding you “need, it. Stay tuned for how I planned it out and the challenges that greeted me along the way .