Bookshelves

 It is true that we do not have the pace we had when we started the Villa Bellevue's adventure, but I think things are still moving. They move slow and even slower, or with less energy, I approach my way in front of the screen to say what is happening with the house. Both in terms of renovations but also improvements of other kind.

I have been a bit slow also in doing something that I call "Spring cleaning", which in reality is a deep cleaning in a room, including thinking of improvements and fixing stuff that is missing or broken.

Starting to preare the shift

During the spring, I did manage to clean out properly the guestroom and I thought of few things that would have been nice to upgrade. One of this was the bookshelf. 

The Billy is behind the new bookshelf

The existing bookshelf in the room (needed for all the kids books that we have kept and that they are reading during the years) was a simple white Billy bookshelf that we bought for our first apartment. It really fit the purpose, but not the style. 

The "new" old looking bookshelf (without shelves)

I thought then of getting something a bit bigger and old looking and I succeeded in getting something more old looking. I was then a bit disappointed and we tried to put the new bookshelf in Oscar's room. His room is not that huge (it was the old servan't sroom) and the bookshelf didn't really fit in size, sadly (just few centimeters). We then put it back but Oscar was then disappointed he didn't have a bookshelf anymore in his room.

Oscar his pulling down his posters

As turn of events, I realized we could put at least part of the Billy bookshelf in his room, and although he had to remove his football posters and the room is a bit crammed, Oscar is now very happy.

Oscar started to put things in order

It does look nice

Oscar is now happy of his bookshelf

At the end, the old looking bookshelf seems quite ok in the room and required that we didn't have to move the big cupboard (not really a bedroom piece, but...), even though it is now not centered and maybe it is not perfect fitting anyway. 

Voltron is happier

I hope it looks ok

I was not really happy at first of the purchase, but I think it turned out ok

The side shelf from the Billy bookshelf I managed to put it in the "tower room" as cleaning storage. I was doing the so-called "spring cleaning" of that room as well. It had been in chaos for at least few years and I had got also pretty lazy in how to store the cleaning products. Well, at least now they are not lying allover the floor...

The cleaning corner in the tower room

Old fashioned

There are so many ways to be old fashioned and I think we top it on many aspects. 

One of the last things we tried to revive is our CD collection (or mostly mine, although most of my CDs/cases are in Italy). 

Media and entertainment section. Board games, vinyls and now the CDs.

Sorting the CDs out

 Since we moved in into an apartment, I had actually searched for a good place for having all the CDs, and we had bought some awful IKEA shelf that we moved from apartment to apartment and eventually landed also in the house. 

It was not really fitting though and it was soon sold - hard to sell though, not so many people these days have CDs or even DVDs. 

I did manage to find a CD tower that has a quite good look and I then unpacked all the CDs that we had around since I had put them in portable cases - it was also easier to have them in the car, back then.

The problem I see is that even if this is a quite big tower, I have so many CDs still to place that they won't fit! 

This will be a new "problem" to solve.

Said that, CDs are having a bit of second life, although vinyls have become pretty popular again. 

Good for me that had quite some nice CDs (also quite some crappy). The only disadvantage is that there is no time to put a CD and listen to it. I mostly listen to music when cleaning and therefore th phone or a speaker becomes more handy.

Shelves

Sometimes one has just to have patience.
Switching from "Billy" IKEA bookshelves (or similar) to better ones requires a bit of luck, especially when the kids' bedrooms are already crammed with furniture and toys and putting a classical big jugend bookshelf is utopia.

The idea has been then to try to find something that could be hanging on the walls, and as the time was passing I thought we would have ended up asking the carpenter to make one for us or similar.

But one day, in one of my daily checks for jugend items on Tradera (the local Ebay), I did find a very lovely piece that would have fit us very much (and it seems Isabella appreciated that too).

A beautiful flower decorated shelf

The small shelf is decorate with inlays of flowers, possibly Iris, which seems to be the recurrent flower in our home (both as windows, furniture and even flowers in the garden).

We are putting books on it

Details

The corner of Isabella's bedroom with the shelf

Certainly, the shelf beauty is a bit hidden by all the books, but that's just a detail.

Then, of course, also Oscar wanted to have something (well, he didn't really scream out loud on it or nagged about it) and on an auction online I saw a Jugend shelf that didn't get very popular.

I can guess why. When I went and pick it up, it was a massive piece and if the one of Isabella's seemed tinier than my imagination had thought, this one was definitely larger. 

My bad that I never check all the parameters of what I try to buy.

Oscar's shelf

Luckily, despite my clumsyness in not making sure the measurements would fit us, the piece fit the wall where it was supposed to be placed just perfectly fine.

Details

The good thing with the size is also that it can swallow a lot of books and items. 

Maybe I am on my way to get rid of a Billy bookshelf, finally?

Oscar's room with the shelf

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...

An empty wall

What do you do when you have a lot of books (in Italy) and you notice that your floor and walls are not straightish and the wooden lists are so big that no IKEA furniture will be in place properly ever?

You take a big wall and decide that it will all become a bookshelf, handcrafted, in massive wood, personalized for the room and the house.

The wall in our studio

The idea is that our studio will host not only our desks, but also a small "library" with armchair (the Jetsons) where one can (we will when we are 70) rest and read a book.

So, this is how this project started. The bookshelf is now under production, after few years in finding the right carpenter (Lodrätt) and define all the details.

Inspiration: an handmade library painted with linseed oil paint. 

What we are after is a bookshelf where there are open shelves and some doors so that some stuff can be hidden there. 

Our bookshelf will not look exactly like this. There won't be the "wings" on the sides and it will not go up to the roof. It will follow the lines of the wooden lists from the windows frame and the lines of the floor wooden list. We will have also small decorations taken from the stairhouse wooden panel to keep the jugend style.

The jugend decoration from our staircase. Picture, Gunilla Carsten

Color test. Natural, Ottosson Linseed Oil Paint White cream, Ottosson Linseed Oil Paint Titanvit, Osmo Dekorvax Snow, Picture, Gunilla Carsten 

As color we decided to use linseed oil paint (from Ottosson) because we like better the white nuance, and of course, we like linseed oil paint.

Then, we got a lot of help (we would have been lost otherwise!) from our carpenter, to choose the right accessories that are needed in this kind of furniture.

The hinge, from Kleelux (German website)

Eschutcheon (Nyckelskylt) in Jugend style, from a German website

The slide, from Specialbeslag

The lock mechanism. From a German website

The key. From a German website

 All these details are going to be in brass.
Now, those are chosen, the wood has arrived, the color is decided. We just have to await the final result :-)

Massive wood for our bookshelf