Update on the front room project...

Well, the boxes for the shelves are finally here (most of them). These are, as you can see, just the boxes...though painted in a spray booth (anyone who has ever had the pleasure of painting installed shelving knows how nice this is). The color looks great with the "Wolf" on the walls (I just realized I did not post pictures of the wall color, will do so as it does not show in these as I did not paint that which is to be hidden)...the jury remains out as to the trim color.

It is a little hard to get the scale in these pictures. We have 11 foot ceilings on the first floor. The boxes are currently sitting on the floor, but will be sitting on about 8 inch boxes so the rooms baseboard molding can be carried across them (if you look in the first picture by the bottom edge of the fireplace, you can see a bit of the baseboard). So the shelves will start about 8 inches or so off the ground and once the crown molding goes on, they should pretty much run the full 11 feet.

The bottom boxes are 2 or so inches deeper and designed for folios and similarly difficult to shelve volumes. The boxes as shown are not yet trimmed out, as they will be getting 3/4 inch trim that will tie everything together and, eventually, frame the glass doors that will be installed (the final design calls for full-height glass inset doors on the upper and bottom shelves...providing both an aesthetically pleasing finish and, more importantly, dust and UV protection).

These weigh a ton...everything you see is 3/4 inch ply-wood (even the backs). Each box is insularly strong enough to take pretty much any load and, when they are all fused together, they should be structurally significant to the house as a whole...

If you look at the first box, you can see the step that will box in a vertical steam pipe running to the second floor. All the shelves for that section are notched to fit. Two point to the Opus. We are planning to tile the fireplace as it was rebuilt at some point and of a brick type that does not fit the house, period or any reasonable aesthetic measure. The current plan also involves rebuilding the mantel to bring it up several inches to balance the size/scale of the shelf between the upper and lower portions of the bookcases. If all goes as planned, the mantel will have a shelf for 12mos and smaller built into it, carrying the books across the chimney span.

I am waiting for the thin, deep shelf that will go in between the closet and interior doors and support the shelves that will carry over the two doors. It should look wonderful when it is done. I'll try to get some other pictures of the walls, etc. shortly.