One of the biggest advantages of the house we rented in Seattle was the built-in bookcases in the living room that helped accommodate the cookbook collection. There are no built-ins here at Casa Sammamish, and I’ve run out of room. Thus, it was time to get more bookshelves.
My current bookshelves were purchased when I was in grad school. Somehow they survived three cross-country and two local moves, despite being made of the flimsiest particleboard. I saw my dream bookcase at the Restoration Hardware Outlet earlier in the month. It even had a sliding ladder. Unfortunately, it had a heart-stopping price. Julian chatted up a contractor working on our next door neighbor’s unit about adding built-ins. The contractor said the cost of the lumber alone would be prohibitive. So off we went to Ikea.
For those of you unfamiliar with Ikea, it specializes in reasonably priced, assemble it yourself furniture. We have a collection of Allen wrenches from our previous purchases. We found a set of three bookcases that would hold more than our current bookcases. One problem: The boxes wouldn’t fit in Gretta; therefore, they were be delivered.
It seemed as if everyone and their monkey were at Ikea. The demographic skewed young. One reason: Students setting up their dorm rooms and apartments. The checkout lines were extremely long. We made jokes about living in the old Soviet Union and standing on line for hours for bread, then standing on line for hours to pay for said bread.
Now we have new issues:
- What to do with the old bookcases? Julian suggested putting them in our upstairs storage room.
- How to reorganize the books in the new shelves? I’ll probably keep a similar configuration, such as keeping the grilling books at eye level next to the espresso machine.
Stay tuned for the before and after photos.
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