A Bookshelf Made All The Difference

Over a course of a week in February, our apartment went from feeling like a pretty-cool-place-that-we-lived to feeling like a home. And all that it took? 1) Hanging up our Printstagram, which I told you about in February, 2) hanging our art behind the couch, which I’ll tell you about someday soon, and 3) finding a bookshelf on Craigslist.

It’s actually pretty phenomenal that these three things were all that it took to make such a huge difference in the way our place feels!

As with pretty much everything over the last year, it took us a long time to find a bookshelf. Which is sort of ridiculous, because it’s a Billy—likely the most common bookshelf in the world!

But we knew we wanted a “medium brown” Billy, and the “medium brown” of five years ago is nothing like the “medium brown” of today. And then it was the winter in Vancouver, and moving a bookcase in the rain? Well, that’s not ideal.

But one day perusing Craigslist while the weather was good I found it: a (today’s) medium brown, disassembled, come and get it as soon as you can, by the way we also live it Kits, tall Billy. And it was perfect.

It probably only took us an hour to get a car, drive for the bookshelf, reassemble it, decide we like the look of it better without the laminate backing, and start arranging our books that have been living in boxes since early December … 2011. They were so happy to be free! And don’t they look fantastic?!

Not only did we add books to our bookcase, but we added some depth with vases, candles, our safari animal collection on the top shelf, and maps! I’m still on the lookout for some super cool bookends; perhaps like the awesome thinker, vintage camera, or bicycle bookends from Homeclick!

Another cool feature? Our “mom” section: each of our mom’s had independently made us gifts when we graduated and those gifts are finally on display…