D.I.LI(BRARY)

There are two things in life you will never regret having too much of: shelf space and, if you’re having an outdoor wedding, tent. Seriously, if you’re planning on doing your nuptials out-of-doors, get enough tent to cover, like, an acre and a half – you won’t regret it.

It recently struck me as a good idea to add a little temporary shelf space around 100 Scope Notes headquarters for two reasons…

1. I’m serving as a judge in the fiction picture book category of the 2012 CYBILS, and will need a place for the nominated books.
2. Beginning in January, I’m serving on the 2014 Caldecott committee – which will mean more books.

And I needed the shelf space already. Here’s the baseline of where I’m at before #1 and #2 have started:

Yes, I’m doing double rows (a.k.a. The Librarian’s Nightmare Scenario).

While I sorely needed space, it didn’t have to be fancy. The shelves needed to be:
1. Cheap.
2. Easy to assemble/disassemble. This was key in maintaining my delusion of “temporary” – as in, I really want to fool myself into thinking I’m not going to cling to these shelves with everything I have and never take them down.

Here’s the area of my basement that seemed like a good place to build my monstrosity.

Sorry – let me clean up a bit.

So taking all my needs and requirements into consideration, what was the answer to my shelving problem?

Take things back to college.

Aww, yeah. I wanted to kick it old school with the dorm room style cinder blocks and boards shelf. If I went for the “deluxe package” envisioned above, with black lights, tapestry, and futon, I think I would actually turn 19 again. All of a sudden, the jam of 1999 was playing in my head:

Shelving choice decided, it was time to round up a few of these:

Cinder blocks. Not pretty, but they’ll do the job.

Adding to the cheapskatiness of the endevour is the fact that my father is a carpenter and had some wood to donate. We cut plywood to the right size and brought it in.

While I don’t think it’s necessary to use plywood rather than normal wood, I do think this will hold up better in the long run (oh right – this is “temporary” shelving. Uh, it will hold up better for the … short run?). After putting a couple small pieces of wood on the ground to keep the shelves off the floor, we started stacking them up.

We also had a couple skinny blocks, so we used them at the top for an extra tall shelf.

While the look is rugged, I do like the results:

We added a couple screws going through the shelves into the wall on an angle, just to make sure everything stayed in place. Definitely, heh, not to, heh, make it permanent or anything.

I put the shelves to work right away, holding my empty cereal bowls and yogurt cups. Also, books.

But the question remains – when 2013 is over, will I be able to actually part with this “temporary” shelving? Will we ever get back to this…

I’ll keep you posted.

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