Evolution of a library

When Don built the pantry last February, he purposely left the long (14-foot) outer wall blank with an idea of filling it with bookshelves at some future point.

That point has arrived.

The majority of our books have been packed away for almost exactly two years.

Of all the household goods scattered among various locations during the chaotic transition period between leaving our old home and settling here, it was the books I missed the most. I chafed and fretted and tried not to express my impatience out loud, but boy howdy I could not WAIT to have our books back – especially since this whole lovely blank wall was waiting for them.

To be sure, we had two large bookcases we brought with us. These shelves and their contents followed us first to our rental house, then here. It's not like we were entirely bereft of reading material.

But everything just seemed so ... so incomplete without the rest of our library on hand.

Finally, about a month ago, we were able to organize a work crew to help Don empty the storage units in our old town and transport the rest of our household goods here to our new home – including the books.

But because the books were stored in nice tidy square boxes and were very heavy to boot, they were loaded first into this huge box truck – which meant they had to be unloaded last. Don and I were in no hurry to offload the truck. Coupled with the crippling heat wave that's plagued the region for the last few weeks, unloading went slowly.

During this time, though, we faced another issue: shelves. Originally I had it in my head to purchase Ikea shelves as a (reasonably) affordable option.

I was wrong. Not long after the pantry was finished, I actually went so far as to try and order these Ikea units online, and couldn't get my order to go through. So I called Ikea and tried to place the order by phone, explaining to the helpful customer service rep about my online difficulties. He checked inventory from his side and said that due to enormous demand, the shelves were on backorder for the foreseeable future.

This was about the time the supply chain shortages were becoming apparent, so somehow this didn't surprise me. But no problem, right? Don can make shelves.

Then lumber skyrocketed to three times its previous price, which meant even DIY bookshelves were becoming a ridiculously expensive proposition. Measuring the wall and figuring in how many board feet he needed (about 130), Don concluded it would cost approximately $360 to purchase the wood to build enough bookshelves to house our library.

So he started looking at alternatives. Happily he found a regional mill that sold rough-milled boards (called "farmer boards") for $0.78 per running foot. Don was able to buy everything he needed for under $100.

Beautiful stuff, ain't it?

It's not shiny and smooth like the boards sold at Home Depot, and because of that I like it better.

We stacked the lumber aside for the time being while we focused on other matters...

...then Don was able to start constructing the shelves for the house.

He made cleats to go under each shelf for added support.

Fitting the cleats.

One by one, the bookcases took shape under Don's skilled hands.

As he finished each unit, we carried it into the house. Finally all four cases were complete.

Aren't they beautiful?

As you can see, the boards aren't smooth and shiny. I think that's one of the reasons I like them so much. I've never been a smooth-and-shiny kind of person.

We tweaked and adjusted the shelves to center them against the wall, then Don fastened the units to each other.

Here's a closer view of the cleats which help strengthen each shelf.

He used brackets to secure the units to the wall.

Then the shelves were complete and ready to fill ... except, of course, the books were still packed away in the very front of the box truck.

Over the course of the heat wave and only working in the very early mornings, we unloaded the box truck little by little and transferred items to the barn. We were close, so tantalizingly close, to accessing the books.

Finally I decided to tunnel through and get started on moving some of the books in the house. During a blisteringly hot day – I think it was 108F at the time – I got the first load of boxes moved.

Call me foolish, call me a stubborn cuss, but I just couldn't wait to fill those shelves!

It was like Christmas, unpacking boxes and seeing the old friends that had been stored away for two years. Gradually empty boxes started piling up on the porch.

Another load in, ready to unpack.

As we opened the boxes, we edited and weeded volumes we no longer wanted. One of my concerns was having too many books for the available shelf space.

The reason for this concern is I had lost track of how many books we owned. Many years ago, I put up a blog post entitled "What do 5000+ books look like?" which described our home library at the time. I literally went around and counted all our books – reading material, reference material, children's books, school books, cook books, books belonging to the girls, you name it. We totaled out at a bit over 5000 volumes.

From that peak, we've reduced enormously. Don and I weeded out about 1000 books we didn't need, and donated them to thrift stores in Coeur d'Alene. When Older Daughter moved to her own apartment, she took her books with her. When Younger Daughter joined the Navy, she edited her library, which I later boxed up and stored away. We gave away most of our unneeded homeschooling resources to younger friends who were homeschooling their own children (keeping back our favorite educational volumes). I purged our enormous collection of children's books, keeping our favorites and donating the rest.

In short, what's left is our personal library. I tallied it the other day, and it came in at just short of 1700 books. Not a huge number, but at least they all fit into the shelf space we have.

We ended up weeding out 5 1/2 boxes from our current inventory, including (sadly) our 1995 World Book Encyclopedia set. I have mixed feelings about getting rid of this set because it's served us well over the years. I hope someone else can use it.

We also put aside and later crated up the remaining school books we're keeping. We'll store these in the barn.

My modest collection of cookbooks is in the kitchen.

Here are three (quasi-transparent) totes containing the children's books we're keeping (the solid blue tote on the upper left contains something else). We'll also store these in the barn. These totes are massively heavy, probably sixty pounds each. Lots of treasured children's books within them.

We're storing Younger Daughter's rather extensive library. Now that YD has her own apartment at her overseas duty station, she would like a select number of these books shipped to her. I'll send her a list of titles and let her choose.

Whatever doesn't get shipped will stay stored in our barn. It's no accident both our girls turned into voracious readers with extensive libraries of their own.

So here's our finalized library. First up is the paperback bookshelf in our bedroom. Don made this back in 1994 or so from century-old barn wood found in the attic of our first (century-old) home we bought in Oregon. It's the only bookcase we brought with us through the years.

Next are the two tall bookcases we inherited from my parents, with Lihn's cage between them. These units will eventually get moved once we install the wood cookstove, which is slated to go exactly where Lihn's cage currently resides.

And finally, the pièce de résistance: the shelves Don made.

I think the library wall is prettier than any artwork could ever be.

So there you go, the evolution of our home library. And – ahem – there's even room on the shelves for a few more additions. Y'know, just in case.

What do 5000+ books look like?

As some of you may have gathered, we love books. We collect books. We have books all over the house, in the oddest nooks and crannies, wherever we can squeeze them. I wrote an article (never published) called Raising a Reader: Confessions of an Obsessed Book Collector which, if I do say so, is a pretty darned accurate portrayal of our family's little, er, quirk.

And to answer the most frequently-asked question....no, we haven't read them all. We've read most of them, though - at least 75%.

So what do 5000+ books look like? I went around and photographed our bookshelves. We have about half of them roughly grouped into categories. The rest are a mishmash.

Here is our collection of history, politics, and finance:


A heavily-used shelf. Top shelf are interior design, some science series, and some photo collections by Life Magazine; next shelf are costuming (chiefly Renaissance and Medieval), arts, and crafts; next are the comic series (Foxtrot, Calvin & Hobbes, Baby Blues, The Far Side, etc.); next are our daily-use schoolbooks; and on the bottom, some oversized books involving art collections and mythology.


Mostly science books (largely geology, biology), including my cherished "In the Shadow of Man" autographed by Jane Goodall back in 1978; plus a few gardening books and miscellaneous mishmash.


A mishmash unit. Lots of novels (Bronte, Seton, M.M. Kaye, Austin) along with absolutely anything else, ranging from Plants of Idaho to a biography of Shirley Temple.


One of my favorite shelving units. This holds Childcraft books and This Fabulous Century books at the top; on the left are World Book Encyclopedias (picked up for $1/each when our old Oregon library upgraded to newer editions); left bottom are history books; and the two right-hand units hold my collection of farming, gardening, and homesteading books.


Oops, almost forgot our cookbooks:


A stray shelf built into the boot unit my husband made, next to our entry way. At the top are the cubbies where we tuck hats, gloves, etc. Bottom, obviously, are boots. This shelf holds a lot of our identification books (birds, flowers, insects, etc.) and some overflow mishmash.


The shelving unit next to the stairs. This is largely a mishmash of books we tend to reach for frequently - political books, Bill Bryson (love him!), some overflow children's books, and a lot of my collection of interior design and decorating books. (Which is pretty funny when you think about it, because I have absolutely no talent for interior decorating.)


The shelving unit next to the piano. This used to be a display unit for our tankards when we were doing craft shows. Now it holds a collection of classic literature - Bronte, Twain, Dickens, Aesop, Mitchell, that kind of stuff. A few shorter sets or series as we find them.


Oldest Daughter's bookshelf in her bedroom:


Our reference shelves, as well as oversized books (mostly art). This unit is at the base of our stairs, and the little radio ($5.99 at Goodwill) is constantly tuned to KAGU 88.7 FM, the classical station out of Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA so I can hear it in my office. Ah, bliss.


Shelves in the front room bathroom (that I now use as a canning closet). The lower shelf has books on religion and several spare Bibles; the middle shelf has books on psychology and human behavior; and the top shelf has books on simplicity and frugality.


Reference books on a high shelf in my husband's "office" (poor guy doesn't really have a proper place to call his own). These are wiring and plumbing manuals, woodworking reference books, appliance repair, that kind of thing.


A typical sight - recently finished (or recently referenced) books piled everywhere.


These shelves are on the stair landing right below my office. These are a mishmash - no particular order or theme.


These are my writing reference books in my office.


These are children's books that the girls have largely outgrown, but are too good to get rid of. We keep them upstairs near where the TV is. (For the record, we don't have TV reception and only use the TV for watching movies.)


One year Don asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I said I wanted a magazine shelf. We had magazines archived all over the house, and I wanted them shelved all in one place. Many of these are magazines Don or I write for - Countryside, Grit, Backwoods Home, Back Home, Crafts Report, etc. Others are magazines we get at thrift stores or free as library giveaways - Architectural Digest, National Geographic, etc. On the top shelf are two series of books (one on classic sailing ships - my husband used to be in the Navy; and the other an almost-complete Great Books of the Western World set) found at a library sale for - I'm not kidding - $3 for each series. For the whole series. (We thought we'd died and gone to heaven.) You can see something of the unfinished nature of our do-it-yourself house by the insulation above the books. On the other side of this wall is my office.


This is our "paperback bookshelf," squeezed into an odd nook outside our bedroom door. Don built these shelves out of 100+ year old barnwood we found in the attic of our old house in Oregon.


Some of our series volumes: my beloved Harvard Classics (incomplete - I'm working on acquiring the volumes as I find them) as well as some Great Classics I picked up for a buck apiece at a library sale. The rest is mishmash. The shelves were originally display units for our tankards back in the days when we did craft fairs. Now they're located in a spare bedroom.


So that's what 5000+ books look like. Any questions?

UPDATE: Now here's the Ultimate Library. I wish!