LibraryOffice Update

Hello! ^_^

So before I get to the photos, I wanted to talk a little bit about what I ended up doing.

Originally, I wanted an entire wall filled with shelves, not quite going up to the ceiling because I’m short, along with a basic desk with a drawer or two to house my ridiculous pen collection. I considered custom shelving, but as my budget for everything changed multiple times over the moving process, I looked into other options while I was making up my mind.

So, first, IKEA. I like their Billy shelves, they look good, but I really wanted gray shelves, so it was a compromise from the get-go. I also wasn’t going to be able to fill the wall with them. I did find a configuration that would be close enough, but every time I tried to check out, something random was unavailable for shipping. After a week of this, I gave up and tried something else. I could have compromised and gotten darker shelves, but I really wanted the office to be different from my general aesthetic.

Next, I found shelves that came with a ladder, and I was super in love! The only problem is that they took up even less of the wall than the IKEA shelves, cost a bunch more, didn’t have a matching desk, didn’t have the number of shelves I wanted, and wasn’t the color I wanted either. So, I kept looking until I found a similar style in a color that was closer to what I wanted.

Out of stock.

I’ll skip over the next few configurations I tried, but at this point, I wasn’t sure I even wanted a ladder anymore, so I decided it was better to get something without a ladder, because I could always pretty easily add one later. I also stopped caring about how much it would cost, because not only was my budget finally set at this point, I also decided it was worth it if I could get something I loved, so I focused on trying to cover as much of the wall as possible.

Insert another week here. Happy with nothing.

I finally found some gray shelves in a style I liked. Of course, they didn’t take up as much of the wall as I wanted, and I didn’t like the shade of gray, but that didn’t matter because they were out of stock anyway. So I compromised some more with some antique white shelves from that same manufacturer that had cherry back paneling. I really didn’t like the paneling, but I did like the antique look, it had the six shelves I wanted, and I was tired of shopping. The site said they would ship in ten days. Great. Ordered. Done.

No.

Ten days went by. They didn’t ship. I call them, and after consulting with the manufacturer, they said it was going to be two months. So I cancelled the order, unwilling to be in limbo with my office any longer than another month, and called a company to build me custom shelves, which funny enough cost less than the shelves I had ordered, were going to cover the entire wall, AND I could get the look I wanted.

Picture One:

The set up came with seven shelves, but because of the height, I knew that wouldn’t work. I’d have to go up to the ceiling in order to utilize seven shelves between the average height of my books and the way I prefer things to be spaced, not to mention the problem of not being able to reach anything on a seventh shelf. I wanted this to be accessible, so the first thing I did was measure to see how far apart I wanted the shelves, and then I took the top shelves out and moved things around.

To procrastinate productively, I watched a handful of bookshelf organization videos to figure out the best way to start getting this together, and I ended up with this configuration:

The chair in the corner has been replaced with a gray fabric chair, but I didn’t have the chair yet when I took this picture. I’m going to try the desk in the middle of the room, and I’m leaving the printer on the shelf for now. I rarely scan anything, and I don’t need the shelf space right now, but it will likely be moved at some point.

I have a few more books to add and a few bits of decor, but it’s a good start, so I’m going to move on to decorating the walls. I’m probably not going to be completely happy with the way things are organized until I have more books, but I love that I have plenty of space, and I love the way it looks in general. 😀