Operation Turn the House Upside Down: Phase One

This weekend, since Tim was off for four days of joy and glory, we decided that we'd start tackling the whole rearrange the entire (well not quite the entire, we're not leaving the master bedroom) upstairs of the house. When we asked the kiddo what color he wanted his new room to be, he said pink. I laughed. Tim tried very hard not to cry. I asked if he liked the red that it currently is and he said yes, so I asked if we could just leave it and he is in heaven. Because red is dark pink round these parts. Scratch one room of painting off my list. Woohoo!

This then made step one box up the books somehow and move the book cases. Tim had the brilliant thought that, as we traditionally spend the Friday after Thanksgiving decking our halls, we could just use the tubs that would otherwise be holding Christmas decor to hold the books. I quietly thought to myself that there was no way we had that many tubs, but it was a good start. So, Saturday morning found me up in the library pulling books off of shelves.

Step one a, though, was to weed through the books and see if there were any that needed to be on their way. I spoke firmly to myself about how books were like clothes and if they hadn't been re-read in a year, then it was time for them to go. And some of the decisions were very easy. Others were a little like playing lifeboat with a room full of good friends. I mean, sure, I hadn't cracked the cover in more than a year (sometimes more than two or three), but just holding the book I got a 60-second memory flash of the story that I so enjoyed and the people who live within those beautiful sheets of paper and then there was the twinge. Part guilt (how could I not have read this recently?), part decluttering drill sergeant (get rid of the books - you're out of shelf space!), part primal cry of pain (because really, I *need* books in my house like other people need oxygen.)

As it was, the six available tubs (you know the 25ish gallon ones, right?) held exactly one and a half book cases full of books. And that's after weeding out one and a half carry on suitcases full of books (I didn't want to use tubs to hold get rid of books, but they needed to go somewhere and we won't need the suitcases for a while, so...there you are.) Tim found more things to hold books - various boxes and so forth, but ultimately we still ended up with teetering stacks of books leaning tenaciously against one another on the floor of what will be the library.

Then came the dilemma. See, the library is moving into what was the kiddo's room. The room I worked long and hard to turn into a whimsical sky with clouds and airplanes. Using wallpaper cutouts for said clouds and airplanes. Have I ever mentioned to you how much I detest removing wallpaper? So we were standing in the now library, looking at the walls and the kiddo's bed, trying to figure out how to magically swap all the furniture, and Tim says, "You know...all the decoration basically ends a foot below the ceiling...which is about where the bookcases end, too..." I saw, immediately, where he was going with that and considered how I felt about a sky blue library with a few airplanes popping out from behind the tops of the book shelves.

As I considered, Tim disassembled the kiddo's bed (and oh, Ikea, how I love you. But really, there needs to be a way to disassemble things partially - no more of this all or nothing business.) And we played slide puzzle with furniture - bookcases out and into the hallway (one into the bathroom), reassemble the bed in the new room, slide bookcases this way and that, move the dresser. And so forth.

I have to say, sky blue library is definitely a win. Whimsical airplanes? Total bonus. Except that I need to add some sort of whimsical phrase along the top border as well now...I'm thinking: Dragons, castles, knights and kings, reading stories gives you wings.  (Or something along those cheesy, rhyming lines.) Now I just need to find a good letter stencil. And reshelve all the books, of course. That should only take another year. Or two.