Bookshelves

When Ray and I moved in our new house, we knew that we wanted to build some built-in bookshelves in our living room.  We do not have a TV stand or entertainment center because our TV went in a little nook above the fireplace in our old house.  We thought about buying a TV stand, but we also wanted the extra space to put books.  It was an intense project, but Ray and his dad are talented and after about 2 weekends, the bookshelves were complete.  Ray has decided, however, that he does not want to become a professional bookshelf carpenter.  Here's the final product and then I'll show all the working pictures that involved a lot of dust and sweat -

Here's the before picture.  The room was green when we moved in.  Ironically, we panted the living room in our old house a similar green color.  I like green, but I got tired of it and I decided I wanted to go with yellow.  Ray had already painted the rest of the room, but he did not waste paint where we knew we would be putting bookshelves.

And a side view before picture -

Ray's dad made the plan for the project.  He did a great job planning and it would have been difficult to do without him -

Working hard -

Progress - the base is complete -

Putting up the shelves -

After the bookshelves were up, Pop was done with his work and Ray had to do the rest -

And Ray painted.  A lot.  He primed it first and then pained two coats.

But I love it!  He did a great job and then I got to "decorate" the shelves.  I did not really decorate too much.  I just put out books and some of our favorite pictures.  It makes the room much more homey feeling though and we have easy access to our books.

 The picture on the left is of me and my mom.  The picture on the right is my favorite picture of Ray and me from our wedding day -

 The candle holder on the top shelf was a gift from my grandmother to my mom.  The Christmas trees were made by Ray's parents.  The fan on the bottom shelf was given to Ray by his Spanish family when he studied abroad in Spain.  O... and the other white thing on the top shelf is a carbon monoxide detector... that's eventually going to go somewhere else. 

 And a view from the side -

Thanks so much Ray and Pop for working so hard on this project!  I really appreciate it!