Operation Reverse Pandora: Phase One, Part One

Living room > Book corner

Yes, this is getting ridiculous, sorry, however, the toy storage items from Vertbaudet won’t be here for a couple of weeks, so I’ve done the other corner of the room and this post will be all about that – the book corner*.

I had booked Friday through Monday off work to do the living room and, I have to say, it’s actually really lucky that the bits for the toy corner hadn’t arrived, because I’m only just done with the book corner.

The brackets arrived on Wednesday and the wood arrived on Thursday – and Chris very kindly sawed the wood down to the right sizes. I love the whole process of putting up shelves, but my arm are ridiculously weak and it would take me a few hours to saw up all that wood – Chris had it sorted within about half an hour.

Friday morning came and I was struck by the novelty of not having to do any work that day, or the next, or the next… I did answer a couple of urgent emails via the phone and also bought the replacement graphics card for my computer (the original had died a sputtering death on Thursday, when working a little too hard in Photoshop), but other than that I was free. Free to do lots of hard physical labour… and boy did it feel good.

I stopped into Wilkinson to pick up screws and wall plugs and sanding paper, bought vegetables for minestrone, which I was optimistically planning on cooking Friday evening, picked up the graphics card and got some brunch from Greggs and Sunshine.

On my return, I spent some time in the basement sanding down the wood, then gathered up my toolbox and various bits and bobs and went up to the living room to measure, mark, drill, plug and attach brackets. It took the whole day. I thought I’d be done with the whole thing by the end of the day and have the hi-fi (which used to be my dad’s) set up ready to mark Papa’s birthday with my mum and sister. As it was, we went to the pub and then came back and sat in the dining room playing the most ridiculous and inappropriate game ever – and laughing uproariously while doing so, which was nice.

Saturday morning, Chris stepped up again and took the girls to ballet (only Rosemary actually goes to ballet, of course – though Eleanor does tend to have a good old spin around and last week made a run for it and got into the dance room before I could catch her), so I could get on with the shelves. (And I did have to spend 15 minutes downloading and uploading some material from a client to get to a freelancer who was working over the weekend – it’s never truly a day off in our world.) By the time they got back, I’d managed to put all the shelves up (which included drilling a bunch of new holes to replace the ones that were really not working – and which need to be filled and painted over, as you can see), and set the hi-fi up (on the ground, rather than on the actual shelves as they turned out to be just a teeny bit too shallow).

The girls and I then spent the afternoon dancing around to CDs** played on Papa’s old hi-fi, while wiping up the dust and so on from the morning’s endeavours. Bloody great fun! A proper hi-fi (even one that has a defective left speaker) makes such a difference, even to someone as tone deaf as me.

In the evening, after a yummy Chinese take-away and beer brought home by Chris, I put together the Tidy Books bookcase. I’m planning on doing a separate review of this as they were so kind as to send it to me for nothing after my original post about Operation Reverse Pandora, but I will just say that it was a real joy to put together and I love it now that it’s here (and not just the idea of it anymore). And then I filled it with books so that it would be ready for the girls in the morning.

And Eleanor showed me how good it was all morning, starting her day by getting four or five books out and bringing them over to me to read – and probably at least another twenty*** over the next hour and a half before her sister surfaced. Oh yes, and she put the books back when I asked her to (and actually a fair few times when I didn’t), which she really isn’t able to do on a normal bookshelf. Rosemary was disappointed that it wasn’t the – hideous – princess bookcase she’d seen a while ago, but she quickly changed her mind about “never reading a book from it ever”, spotting books she hadn’t seen in a while, and even taking one away to look through all by herself (actually, that was a princess book) for about half an hour.

I spent the morning putting books on shelves and, after a break to tidy the bedroom, put clothes away, sort dirty washing, put washing on, empty and load the dishwasher and make a half-hearted attempt at silently de-hairing the staircase, while Eleanor slept and Chris and Rosemary were out swimming, I put the rest of the books on the shelves (six boxes thereof), while listening to music and watching Eleanor and Rosemary explore the book and music corner (yes, the books are going to have to share with the music, it seems, as I’ve put the music basket in there, too, and Rosemary turned it into a little stage to dance with.

And we now have a finished Book and Music Corner:

I have left a few gaps (which Chris reminded me to do) for putting cups of tea down, or placing little bits and bobs that need to go out of reach (though Eleanor has since demonstrated that the bottom shelf is not out of her reach), so the gaps may need to be rearranged somewhat.

Anyway, I love it and the girls love it. Am not entirely sure of Chris’ verdict as yet, as he’s not spent enough time in there to comment properly. Hopefully he’ll actually have some time during the week to make use of the room and let me know.

We shall continue Phase One later this month, when the Vertbaudet stuff arrives, so consider February part of Phase One and Phase Two (probably the dining room, but possibly one of the bedrooms) will start in March.

* I love the term ‘book corner’ and this really does feel like a book corner. One where I want to take my book (that, unfathomably, I have been reading since before Christmas) and curl up with a cup of tea and a packet of biscuits (darn it, am on weight-loss thingummy, so will have to make do with tea) and just lose myself in the book until it’s all finished. So, once this post is written, I might just do that.

** We listened to Ragtime to Swing – Live at the Royal Albert Hall, Music to Watch Girls By, Abba Gold: Special Edition, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More with Feeling, How to Meet Girls, The Best Of The Specials, The Animals and The Best of Chuck Berry .

*** She was most excited by the various Hairy Maclary (and friends) books and the Maisy ones – even shouting ‘Maisy! Maisy!’. She spent most time with On the Farm (Board Book Deluxe). It’s got various pulling, pushing and so on bits and she spent ages twisting a wheel round to move some balls around. Amazing what can amuse a small child!

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