Bookshelf saga

From our empty wall we have made good progresses. But it has been a painful road.
Despite all, we are quite satisfied of the final result.

We start with June. When we finally got the first part of the bookshelf mounted. This implied few days of a carpenter home with us (almost literally) mounting the pieces together.

PIcture by Gunilla Carsten

Wood strips. Picture by Gunilla Carsten

Bottom is put together. Picture by Gunilla Carsten

For my side, everything look quite beautiful and melted in the room very nicely, as we would have hoped. 

However, (if we discard the fact that we were having a person  more around us all the time, more than we expected) there were some few things unclear. For example, although it was obviously not a problem for us, the bookshelf was not ready and I didn't understand it until that moment. Doors and shelves were still needing to be painted or finished or whatever so we would have visitors yet another time.

Sadly, the mounting of the shelf collided with also my handover at work - communicated all suddenly and so I couldn't really plan differently.

Result: I couldn't be home and so the last day, when the finishing paint was supposed to be done (or at least, that was part of the finishing touch)  I came home and  realized I had few questions about the job and especially the paint.... 

What's that grey stuff?

This was supposed to be the finishing paint

Almost not a single surface was free from shadows

Basically, our carpenter took the instructions from Ottosson linseed paint literally and didn't think of finishing the painting, rather stating that three layers were enough (and this was not clear from the form of contract we had). I did obviously expect a finished product, she was trying to climb on the windows (or on the bookshelf!) for stating she would not fix that.

Obviously, something went wrong in the drying process, otherwise that lovely effect wouldn't have been there. And that, me, an amateur in linseed painting, had understood clearly it couldn't look like that.
After a couple of weeks of discussions (not exactly friendly all the time) and plenty of stress, we managed to find an agreement. I would have to find someone else to fix the paint and of course, we would get the end of delivery done (with some extra time, just to be sure that the paint would be done properly).
Let's not talk of the chaos with boxes and books that had already got two months of dust and cat hair in the other room... I was not really keen to get some extra time on this at this point in time.

Key detail

The doors have been mounted. Picture by Gunilla Carsten

Since the painting needed to be redone, the shelves couldn't be put on. Picture by Gunilla Carsten.

In the end of August we finally got the shelves and the doors. 

The shelves did lie vertically on the wall next to the bookshelf for a few months more though. This because first we would have needed to paint, then to dry and then finally we could start to put everything in order.

Plenty of space to store a lot of stuff. Finally!

Painted better, right? :)

I was thinking that finally, with patience because we would have to wait some extra time to paint and dry, we could have this finally solved and out of our way. We could finally put all the books up, clean the room and enjoy this wonderful bookshelf.

But of course. I was optimist.

Few mounted shelves

Yes. I did manage with some hassle to put most of the shelves. Not exactly straightforward or easy. A bit unnecessarily complicated in a sense, since one has to push them down with a special move and hope they fit.
I was hoping for a bookshelf that should require some flexibility (yes, you never know I want to change how the shelves are depending on the books we put!) it wouldn't require a lot of cursing to move things around.

One of the nasty shelves didn't want to fit in at all

Obviously, not everything had been measured/tested properly (I bet the fault is that the shelves have been lying around instead of being mounted immediately) because there were few shelves that didn't fit the second block of the bookshelf. Few broke in this, we had to glue them (!) and at a certain point we gave up.

Will we ever finish this project?!?!?

Manga collection

Enough is enough and I was tired of waiting to clear the adjacent room from all our crap and I wanted to see books IN the bookshelf, finally!
So, with the help of Isabella, most of the shelves finaly got filled with books. And finaly, not only Mattias' books. Most of my stuff is here as well! My manga, my books, my university books, my notebooks....
There is still plenty that should come, one day, but I am pleased to see them "closed by" and have few things accessible for the kids.

Work is ongoing. Almost finished!

While putting up things in order, I have noticed another side issue... It seems it is obviously very hard to think that the doors height needs to match. Mattias thinks that this is a needed shrewdness because of our floor, which is not exactly flat.
I simply think it is something else that didn't go fine...

Hard to make doors?

We took control of the shelves - first we tried to grind them, but that didn't help so much. Then I begged my "master" for help (thank God we have this reference figure, although far away, among the constellation of carpenters which we deal with) and got the hint  to use a japanese saw.
And after buying that, Mattias enjoying finally refining these shelves. For some even 0.5 cm went off, which I think it is not an acceptable margin of error considering the type of work we have requested here.

Slicing up shelves

Anyway. We did it! Or better, Mattias did it! 

The shelves went up, the extra shelves have been put away. All the books are in order.

What satisfaction!

Finally, it is "done!"

But wait... isn't this too good to be true?

Of course it is!

We tried to unlock one of the doors and... *SBANG* the key broke. 

Mattias tried to unlock it with another key and... well, anyone can guess the result of this. 

Broken key :(

We are now trying to get hold of the keys from the German webshop, but answering to our request seems optional.

And of course, even with a key, it is almost impossible to lock that door again. Let's not comment on this...