Room By Room: The Library

This is probably my favorite room in the house.  Though I also love the kitchen.  And the living room, and the bedroom, and well okay every room in the whole house is a pretty close runner-up.  I'm not even sure if you ccan technically call the library a separate room, as it's more like an alcove in the living room.  But this is my blog so I get to call it what I want to, and "reading alcove" doesn't sound nearly as exciting as "library."  So library it is.

Anyway, this room was originally the dining room of the house, but the strangely shaped alcove on the back wall was just begging for a built-in, and when the folks at Signature Custom Homes learned about my modest little book collection they suggested that a library for me would be the perfect conversion for this room.  I'm so glad they did!  You can see a slideshow of the whole remodeling process after the jump.

The room was already fairly accessible since it was open to the rest of the house, but the carpet was too thick for easy rolling, the window leaked heat, and the stenciling job was very odd.  Why did they stencil everything but the back of the alcove?  Literally the entire house had some sort of stenciled border with the exception of Connor's room, one wall of the entry, and this alcove.  It's not like the display cabinet the original owners had in there (see the Library Before picture on the slideshow) covered it up or anything.

Sorry.  Got a bit off topic there.  At any rate the stencil quandry was solved by a liberal coating of paint and by the addition of those beautiful built-in bookshelves.  Right now we have books on them floor-to-ceiling, but as we age we may decide to use the upper halves for display and reserve the lower, wheelchair accessible shelves for books.  Wainscoting helps tie-in the room with the entry and the living room.  The new window helps keep things at a comfortable temperature, and it also opens (unlike the original window) for good cross circulation.  The laminate floors make for easy manuevering, and a new light fixture provides plenty of illumination for reading.

The armchairs are fairly light and easy to move so that Jer can access the shelves.  They also recline, so that I can sit curled up in one with a cup of tea and a book.  I love having a place in the house to call my own, and I'm sure I'll be spending many happy hours in here.  Sheer bliss! 

Tomorrow I'll be posting about the kitchen-- and be forewarned that it'll be a pretty long post as there's a lot to talk about in there!

~Jess