#i miss my books

I am building a big ol’ built in bookcase and window seat in my living room.

I used those some of those same salvaged corbels on my front porch, and will use another in my kitchen remodel.

The window looks out on to a screened front porch that I used a lot when I first moved here, and not at all in the last couple of years. There’s a counter and tall stools along the front edge of the porch, and my mom and I used to eat lunch out there on Saturdays when she came over to garden with me. I miss that, and her, a lot.

The bookcase has been slow going because my ancient house is SO CROOKED. The floor slopes from left to right, and actually ripples/rolls forward. The walls are not plumb, and the ceiling is almost two inches higher on the left side of the room. It’s what I get for years of staunchly promoting asymmetry in design.

So I have to start with level, and then eyeball everything from different vantage points, because if I built it prefectly level (as if I could) it would look like a crooked junk heap in the context of the room, and I would always feel like I had to defend it.

But someday, I will sit on that window seat, on a lovely velveteen cushion, and read a book and gaze out the window and chastise myself for not using the front porch more. And I will empty out my entry closet which is packed floor to ceiling with boxes of all my books, which I also miss.