Almost There

In the beginning, there was a rather large closet in my office that held a small desk and a wooden cabinet I stored my office supplies in. There was a rather large laser printer on top of this cabinet so I dubbed the whole thing my printing alcove. But then I got a new printer and I figured it was time to bring my printing out of the closet. This entailed re-arranging furniture, including unloading and reloading a couple of book cases. And then I decided, why not turn it into a reading nook?

You can read all about it HERE and the next steps HERE.

When last I reported about the progress of my reading nook, it looked something like this:

The shelves were in place and the frame for the seat was in place. Then we hit a slight snag when it came to closing in the bench. It should be noted at this point that with the exception of the strapping used to hold up the shelves, this entire project was made using recycled wood. The seat for the bench was cut from an old ping pong table cover for a pool table, and was apparently paint resistant. It took forever for the paint to dry.

But with the help of a dehumidifier and a fan, and plenty of patience, it did eventually dry. So the first thing was to close in the front of the bench:

And then we (and when I say "we" I mean "the hubby") discovered one slight hitch when it came to installing the top part of the bench. Because the edge of the top of the bench is to be used as the final shelf for books, the top goes across the entire width of the closet. And there was only one problem with that - the shelves were already in place and made it impossible to get the top in there in one piece, despite the fact there was a big piece cut out of the middle so I can use the inside of the bench for storage.

Removing the bottom couple of shelves was a bit of a pain, but doable, but the top still didn't fit because the strapping was in the way. The old ping pong table top is pretty inflexible, which makes it a great choice for a seat, but not so great for fitting it in place. So in the end it was cut in half and then nailed in place, and really, who's going to see it once the cushion is on there?

The cats are still a little put out by all the changes going on in my office, although you can hardly smell the paint any more. In fact, I hardly get any kitty visitors any more, unless it's close to meal time. However, Taz and Julius did check out the nook one day:

And so, for all intents and purposes, I no longer have any excuses not to start the Great Book Migration, whereupon I start filling the shelves. It was always in my mind that the nook will be perfect for all of my science fiction and fantasy books, both paperback and hardback. The reason for this genre and not some other is because many years ago most of what I read was science fiction and I acquired a rather large collection of books, mostly through the Science Fiction Book Club. But over the years I got away from the hard science fiction, and even a lot of the pure fantasy. This means the collection is more or less permanent so I won't be having to continually shift books around as I add or subtract from it.

Currently these books are spread throughout the house, so the first step will be gathering them all together.

Of course I can't just throw the books up onto the shelves, that would make it too easy. I'm going to be putting them into alphabetical order by author. And I'm also going to be creating a database so I know just which books I have, and which I'm missing.

What was I thinking??