Bookcases

I've had built-in bookcases in two places that I've lived and had to leave them behind when I left. So when I moved to Florida 19 years ago, I decided to buy free-standing bookcases. At the time there was a store here called Naked Furniture - you selected unfinished furniture which they would finish and add moulding. I wanted pine but the saleslady convinced me to buy oak instead.

At some point, I painted the room white and decided the bookcase would look better if the back was white too. Since I didn't want the mess of paint in my den, I wallpapered the back.

When the den was painted brown, the oak just looked terrible and there was no getting around the fact that the bookcases had to be painted. I'd rather lick a snake that go through that again - remove and store 48 linear feet of books, the tv, dvd player, and wiring. Since I was going from oak to white, it required two coats of primer and one of paint. And I decided to do this in Florida in July using my porch as a workshop so I was sweaty and covered in paint for two weeks! I don't think the color is a perfect white but it's close enough - I'll never go through that again!