I dreamt of bookshelves

We have a smallish house (1442 sq. feet). Okay, I guess it's not super small, but the layout is hard to work with. The kitchen/dining room/living room/entry is all one big room, which means there's fewer places to put furniture/storage solutions unless you want it floating out in the middle of the room--and we have small bedrooms. We've been living here for three years now (the longest we've ever been in one place!) and I've been anxious to make it more home-like and less starving-college-student-like.

So I'd been pining over some Carson bookshelves from target.com for a loooong time. We already have one in our living room and so I wanted to keep the same look going. But we never seemed to have the extra cash until a couple of months ago, and I finally ordered them the instant the money hit the bank.

 

The kids were so helpful putting them together...

Madelyn had long outgrown her little bookshelf. 

P.S. I think kids' stuff multiplies during the night. I don't know how else to explain the amount of stuff that she has.

 

I laughed when I realized how HUGE her new bookshelf was!

 

It took a while to sort through everything. *cough* She has a lot of books, plus we had another box full from my parents, who were getting rid of theirs.

 

I took out all the baby board books to put in Luke's room, and finally her books, coloring books and sketch pads had enough room.

Luke didn't have a place for his books other than this teeny little night stand.

He had this LOVELY dresser, which Mark got at a pawn shop years ago and used to hold some of my craft stuff.

But a year ago (seriously, it's taken me that long to post about this), we bought this gem off a friend who was moving for like, $25:

(didn't manage a picture before Mark took it apart)

It was a cute robin's egg blue, but Luke's walls are already sort of that color--only darker with more gray--and it would have looked weird in there.

So I had Mark paint it white (He always rolls his eyes because of my white furniture fetish).

 

He took out Luke's changing table (that my dad built) and we put it in storage, because the new dresser could fit the changing pad on top just as well.

AND THEN.........I still didn't use it as a dresser for many more months. No, I don't know why. Okay, well part of the reason was that the drawers hardly opened and smelled funny. So Mark replaced the drawer tracks a few months ago. Have I mentioned lately how nice it is to have a handy husband???

 

Then when it finally warmed up enough to paint again (oh! See there's an excuse. It's too cold to paint stuff in the garage for half the year.) he painted the inside of the drawers to help freshen them up, aesthetically and also for the funky smell problem.

All the hardware is original. Don't you love it??! The diaper pail on the side is a nice touch, too. I know.

 

The final switch happened AT LAST when Madelyn got her new bookshelf, which meant that Luke got her old one, and his old dresser got the boot (now sitting in the garage, awaiting a makeover), which meant that his clothes had to go into the new dresser.

And now the universe can resume its normal course.

Btw, that wall color is Frozen Pond from Behr, and it is spectacularly fabulous.

Anyway (congratulations if you're still with us), we also bought a bookshelf for our bedroom. It was also way bigger than I expected. Ha!! (Bigger is better than smaller, in any case.)

 

 Our dinky bedroom. When Luke was born, we had a playpen in that corner, and that's where he slept for almost a year. Then it had nothing. Look, you can still see where he broke my favorite nail polish all over the carpet!

Even though it's not all full (yet), the main thing is that it has those two bins, which contain the clutter that used to be all over the tops of our dressers. Finally having a place for all our stuff is reason #1 why I dreamt of bookshelves in the beginning. Ahhhhhhh.

Other house related dreams:

1. Do something about our disgusting carpet.

2. Paint the kitchen/great room.

3. Paint all the trim/doors in the house.

4. Paint the front door.

5. Finish the back yard.

6. Get a new kitchen table and chairs.

7. Crown moulding in the bedrooms.

8. Buy Madelyn a new bed/mattress.

9. Buy us a new mattress.

10. Win a million dollars so that 1-9 will be possible.

I'll keep you posted.