Bee in My Bonnet

Back in November I was reading a magazine and there was an article about a designer mom who converted a room in her house in to a giant library for her kids with display bookshelves and a low table for playing games and reading. And much to Papa Bear's despair, I got a bee in my bonnet. We love reading in this house and how perfect would it be to have a room in the house dedicated just to reading where the boys could see all of their books instead of having to dig through book bins to find what they want. And since we didn't have a spare, empty room just waiting to be made into our new library - and since I am NOT a designer it was going to be a little tricky.

First I convinced Papa Bear that we didn't need a formal dining room. It didn't really take much convincing when we have actually only used it as a formal dining room 3 times in 3 years but it took a little convincing to get him to wrap and pack our expensive dining room table and find a place in our over packed storage space. But once that was accomplished I set out on Craigslist to find cheap yet comfortable furniture to fill the room. The bookshelves were the most difficult because I had a specific display that I wanted so that kids could see the books and not just have a spine out bookshelf. So Papa Bear got a carpenter friend of his to custom build them for us. Papa Bear proudly designed them on AUTO CAD with a section plan that I couldn't make heads or tails out of. Craigslist furniture purchased, custom bookshelves built, painted and secured to the walls and books displayed for the boys - the bee was no longer in my bonnet (although I still want to paint the room once we can agree on paint colors). We spent under $300 for everything now we have a whole extra room in our house that we use much more than we did the dining room. Oh and we eat in our large eat-in kitchen/sunroom so have no fear!

And here it is, our new reading room!