Library Renovation

Renovating the Library

The library was my dream room. When we first toured this house, I immediately envisioned a library for this space. I Love to read and this room appeared big enough to house my collection of books!

The beginning:

This room started as a formal living space. There is one big double window, but no overhead lighting. The wainscoting and trim were dark brown wood, and the walls were a creamy dirty white. I pictured a brighter, whiter space to show off my books on white floor to ceiling bookshelves.

Scraping and Painting

First, I removed the popcorn ceilings (You can read about that process here). Second, I cleaned the wainscoting and the walls to prepare for painting. I started with Kilz Primer on the wainscoting. The wood soaked up each layer I painted, and I ended up painting over 6 coats. It was difficult to get the paint in-between all the cracks of the wainscoting. Had I known this, we could have filled the cracks prior to painting. I almost stoped with just the primer and left it with a rustic look.

First Coat

Before painting the final white coat of paint on the trim, we painted the walls a grey/blue. I tried getting a Benjamin-Moore color matched at Lowe’s, but the end result is not exact. It looks more blue or more grey depending on the light.

Walls Post Paint

This is the final coat of wall and trim paint. The room is difficult to photograph due to the lighting, so the color does not come through it is true state here.

Time for Bookshelves!

After completing the painting, it was bookshelf time! Evan’s parents graciously picked up 5 of these bookshelves from Ikea. I chose these as they are all pine except for the backer board.  My previous shelves came from Goodwood. I love the quality of them, but the price was comparable to the ikea shelves and still required painting. These shelves came fully painted and ready for assembly. Lucky for me, Evan loves bookshelf assembly projects. 😉

(When looking up the link for these shelves, I noticed they now come in more colors and stains!)

Bookshelf Assembly

Because we did not have good internet at the time of assembly, I did not take many great pictures of all the ikea pieces filling the library! Evan created a great assembly line and we completed putting them together in one evening. Then the next night he fastened all of the shelves to the wall to prevent them from tumbling over.

5 shelves up!

Luckily 5 shelves almost completely filled this wall. I hope eventually we can frame the bottoms and sides to mimic built ins. No matter their current state, I am in Love!

Book Organization

Book Organization

I can not describe how excited I was to unpack all of my books and organize them. Back story, Evan and I packed up our house in January of 2016 to move into our new home. Some how I ended up working the day of move in, and our friends graciously carried every box of books I owned upstairs into the house. However, a few weeks later, Evan received a great opportunity to work in a different city. Every thing we packed up for what we thought was a few weeks turned into over a year and a half. Now, I could finally unpack and put all my books in their new home!

Finished Product

Library!

This picture was taken right after I finished setting up my books. Of course, the shelves hold many more titles now that it is several months later.

Erin Chair

Opposite the shelves are the two windows. Our friend Erin gifted us this great lounging chair that I placed in this nook. Fisher loves sitting in the sunlight, and it is the perfect place to curl up with a great book. I want to find a wall lamp or tall stand lamp to place behind it and hang some art on the wall here.

Thank You!

I can’t thank Evan and our families enough for helping me prepare this room and set up my new shelves. The room still needs overhead lighting, lamps, pictures hung and my piano placed before it is complete. Any takers on helping to move my piano here?!?

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