New bookshelves - finally!

Okay, I just have to share this, because it is an awesome thing for me. Yesterday when I got back to my parents, my Dad picked me up at the train station and we went shopping. Not the "we need food" kind of shopping, the book shelf kind of shopping. I have been talking to my parents about getting one or two (or maybe even more) book shelves for the past year or so, so it was a looong process. In the end, we came up with a way that would also help me separate the sleeping area of my room at their place from the living / working area.

Now, my Dad picked me up yesterday, after I had already given up hope that it would work during the semester break, and off we went to get me some book shelves. I had even saved up some money for the occasion over the past months.

Before I had the very final okay (my parents, especially my Mom, were concerned the weight of the books would be too much for the floor), Mom, my brother, and I went to look at some furniture. My brother is in the middle of re-decorating his room, so we had a reason to go and decided to take a peek at book shelves as well. After some looking around, we found a couple nice book shelves, although they were fake-wood ones.

Now when I went to get them with Dad, he saw them and said we should look around for wooden shelves, so we did that - and were successful! And we even saved some money!

As it turns out, I didn't even have to pay for both shelves, as they were an early birthday present :-D Now imagine how happy I am!

Before I got the new shelves my room at my parents was filled with books in every spot available!

Note before you look at the pictures: Please ignore the messy room. I haven't found the time to make the bed today. I was busy baking, filling up my bookshelves and cleaning up the (saw) dust that came with the bookshelves.


These are my bookshelves before. There's another row of books behind the sofa - which, by the way, also had a stack of books on it.

Then, I had a couple books on a box on the floor on the right of the sofa.


This is the box from above.


This is the books from the side. Yes, even on top of the box I had two small stacks of books.

And of course, I also used the niches underneath the roof for my books:


Those are my new book shelves, which my Dad and I set up right after buying them. They now work like a paravent, to separate me bed and closet from the rest of the room:



Now everything is more organized and the niches are mostly free (apart from two of them my dictionairies and a few unread mangas). Even the box is gone - well, empty, at least!


I have lots of free space for more books, and the new bookshelf isn't even filled in two rows for the most part yet!
To make it look less empty, but still nice to look at from both sides, I sorted my movie collection on the shelves. See the bottom row on the right? Those are the videos I own (yes, I'm *that* old, kids LOL). And on the left, the second and third row from the top are filled with with movies and the two rows closer to the bottom are filled with my DVD boxes for TV series.
Oh, and the top two rows on the right? They hold my books for reading challenges, as far as I could find them. (Some are at my place.) And if you look really close, you'll also see a few books sitting in the row that separates the movies from the DVD box sets. This is my short stack for April (minus three books I'm currently reading. Those are on my dark red rocking chair - the one that used to belong to my Mom when she was a teenager!


And these are the new shelves from the other side. My assorted collection of unread books that are not (yet) challenge reads.


Even the old shelves are more organized now. See the manga section on the right? Those used to be in the niches. And there's also hardly anything lying on top of the rows of books!

I have to be honest. I already did some calculating and I think I can add about 300 more books on those shelves before they're filled again. When I told my Mom, she was - not amused, to put it mildly :-) You just have to love her, though, because she's the one that just filled up some empty shelves at Grandma's with a bunch of books of her own. It *does* run in the family!