November 12, 2010

The Bookcase

For the rest of my life I will maintain that Scott and I are absolutely brilliant. No matter how badly we screw up from here on out, we are geniuses.

It began in March. I wanted a bookcase. I have a lot of books. They deserve to be shelved. I knew what I wanted. It had to look antique. Scott said it had to be solid wood or it was junk and not worth paying for. I was okay with that. I searched online for months, saved money here and there, but really procrastinated on this. He told me just to buy one. I insisted on saving the money THEN buying it. He thought I was being ridiculous (for the record, I never got past $40 in an envelope and eventually I pulled that out to spend at Barnes and Noble. Quite ironic).

We began looking in furniture stores in Anchorage in October, because this whole process was getting ridiculous. What we found fit into two categories: 1) fake wood and overpriced or 2) "real" Amish furniture and $1200. This really made me miss the lower 48.

After a frustrating day, Scott said he'd just build one. Then, and I cannot remember who mentioned this first, it was brought up that we buy a hideously-stained, but real oak bookcase from JCPenney Furniture for less than $300. That was at the very bottom of our price range. We would paint it black, attack it with a chain and sandpaper, and we'd have our bookcase for considerably less than anything we'd seen in the stores.

Literally, after we had the bookcase (already put together because it's solid wood!) and paint, it took about 2 hours. I had no idea it would be that easy. We added some scalloping trim to the top and it is nicer than just about anything I've seen in any store. And we did it ourselves!


A close-up of the trim we added and the distressing

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