Category Archives: bookshelves

It’s been a while…

Posted in bookshelves, house, Inspiration by

I have been very motivated to do lots of things around the house.  I especially get more motivated when things get really busy at work because it is a way for me to relax.  So this is what I have been up to:

  1.  I finished painting the two doors on the third floor black 
  2. I bought a new dining table!
  3. I painted three of our old dining chairs in Regal Matt Black by Benjamin Moore and upholstered the seats in a very dark gray fabric from Ikea
  4. I painted the back wall of my room black and I used Benjamin Moore Chalkboard paint as I did on the doors
  5. we bought Kiran a full size bed for his room from Ikea
  6. I rearranged the furniture in Kiran’s room and organized all his toys in separate baskets.  (This has worked out really well.  Kiran cleans up most of the time and I don’t have to deal with stray toys all over the house).  

Here’s what I would like to get done for April

  1. Install two curtain rods and hang some sheer curtains (which I already have) in the back room
  2. Install a shelf in the vestibule and put some small baskets to store scarves and gloves in one space
  3. Pick a color and paint the guest room
  4. Paint the office room in black or dark grey
  5. sell more furniture and clear out the basement!
  6. figure out how I can build a bookshelf for the office room like this:
Image via Vintage

Oh and if you are wondering why I haven’t posted any pictures of what I’ve been up to well it is because my camera is not working.  Apparently the sandy conditions in Sri Lanka were too much for my camera.  I plan on buying a camera before April 18th (which is Kiran’s birthday) but I just can’t bring myself to spend the money again since we’ve only had our camera for about a year.

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More About Books in the Fireplace.

Posted in Books, bookshelves, house, living room, organizing by

The two main reasons that I decorate, renovate, rearrange and work on the house (constantly) are because: 1)  I enjoy being in a beautiful space and 2) I enjoy being creative.  Ultimately life is about the creation of beauty and perception of beauty through our senses is it not?

What does this have to do with the books in the fireplace? Well Kiran and I were sick and stuck at home recently.  So I decided to color code the books in the fireplace (something I have been meaning to do).  It was a fun project for us to do together and the result is fabulous (at least it looks a million times better than it used to look). 

Being sick is never fun, but being sick and taking care of a sick child is so much worse! Little projects like this kept us sane and it was a lot of fun.

Organizing Some Books.

Posted in Books, bookshelves, house, organizing by

While the fireplace is the the major “bookcase” in our house, I also have some of my favorite books on the shelves in my room.  These books were stacked randomly and always looked a little messy.  Yesterday evening while Scott was working upstairs I decided to organize them. Yes they are color coded and they look fabulous!

I am now wondering if I should try to color cordinate the books in the fireplace as well…

The Living Room (update).

Posted in Books, bookshelves, house, living room, thrifted by

This is our living room.  I’ve been meaning to post pictures of the living room for a while now but I never got around to it.  This is mainly because the living room is really hard to photograph.  It is generally filled with light but all the pictures facing the windows generally come out either too dark or too light.  Well finally this snowy day I found the right time to take some pictures. Click here and here for some earlier pictures.

The couch is from Crate and Barrel and it was our first new piece of living room furniture.  The chrome rocker on the right of this picture is a Milo Baughman chair that we got for free while we students.  At the time we just thought that it was a fabulous chair without any knowledge of its pedigree.  The coffee table is from a flea market in New Jersey and it was manufactured by Lane. I think we paid $45 for the coffee table.  The chest on the left is also by Lane and it is made out of Cedar.  The rug is an eighty year old Persian rug that I bought on eBay.

Thrift store bottles, old thrift store lamp, puppets from Indonesia and Lane Cedar chest from the 50s.


Milo Baughman chair (possibly)

We found this chair at a thrift store in Philly.  While it looks like a Milo Baughman chair there aren’t any markings on the chair.  I love this chair. It was love at first sight.  The chrome and wool chair in the dining room, to the left of this picture is part of a pair that I bought on eBay.  Yes I have a thing for chairs!  We bought the butterfly leather chair on my first trip to Sri Lanka with Scott.  The rose brass lamp was a total score at $30 dollars at a local thrift store.  I was so excited to find it that Scott had to talk to the person at the store because he was sure that I would pay more for it than what they were asking.  The white lamp we bought recently on the side of the street when we were coming home late one evening.  I think we paid $60 for it but I had been wanting a task lamp in white for a while so it felt like a good deal.

The “library”
We found this mantle at another thrift store but it wasn’t thrifty at all.  We have always had a mantle in the old apartments that we’d lived in Philly and we really wanted one for this house.  The mantle houses some of our books.  This was supposed to be a temporary storage place for our books until we built bookshelves but we ended up really liking the books in the mantle. 

View of Mantle from the vestibule door
A lot of the furniture in the living room is from thrift stores. We also have end tables (not shown) with dove tail detailing that match the coffee table, that we found at a Goodwill store in New Jersey (ten years before we bought the coffee table).  I love old furniture.  Mainly because it is built really well but also because I rarely see new furniture that I like (that I can afford). Every piece of furniture in this room we’ve both been immediately drawn to. Also most of the furniture has been with us for so long that is intimately woven into our lives. 

Dream Bookshelves

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I was sick the last few days. I hate being sick because it is such a waste of time. It is great to have a few days off from work but I like to use my time off for either a vacation or to do stuff around the house. Unfortunately, I was so sick that I did absolutely nothing (other than complain a lot) . However, I did find some time to daydream about a few things that I would eventually like to have in our home. I love the room below because it has two things that I love: a wall of bookshelves and a wall of gallery pictures. I am a big fan of framing everything…especially old pictures. I love this room.