Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Door Shelves! From Doors! Now They're Shelves!

At the Habitat for Humanity's Restore a miraculous discovery was made--old closet doors, $5 a pop, were exactly the perfect size to fit into the playroom nook in which we'd wanted a bank of sturdy shelves. So, down came the rickety plywood shelves that Matt slaved over making and that I constantly griped about hating (on account of they sucked!), and after an entire afternoon of this--

--we now have, awesomely, this: Finally, space for beads (Perler beads for mosaics and regular ones for stringing and collaging and decorating and embellishing...)Finally, space for toys you need space to spread out with, board games and floor puzzles and Legos and blocks:
Finally, space for the art supplies that I insist on buying in bulk, because frankly, I'd rather run out of food than art supplies:Finally, space for the kind of good non-fiction books that you really need to lie down on your belly on the floor, maybe with a big pillow or two, to explore:Finally, space!!!!
What with life, natural disasters, and everything, I haven't had too much time to throw all the stuff on them that I want to, and I won't be doing it tonight, either. On Tuesday nights, I feed the girls an early dinner before my office hours and their dance class, and after office hours I put them to bed while Matt goes to get grown-up take-out from a real restaurant, and then we sit down, at a table, just the two of us, and eat and talk like adults. What do we talk about?

The kids. Duh.

7 comments:

Kimberly said...

Gorgeous!!! Recycled doors into shelves, who'd have thunk it (yes, I used horrible, horrible Southern IN colloquialism to someone who teaches in the English dept!).

Abby said...

nice shelves! can matt come over and build us some shelves in our basement playroom? we are in serious need of some!

Kimberly said...

Wait....OMG is that a Death Star on the top of those shelves? Right on! :-D My husband had a Millenium Falcon strung by fishing line (so that it "hovered" in the air) in our old house. He hasn't rigged it up yet in our new one.

Anonymous said...

The shelves look great! What a brillant idea to use closet doors. Pure genius.

julie said...

Aww, you guys! I'm basking in your compliments, because this is literally, in three years of home ownership, the first time we have ever, ever done something to the house that didn't end up just making it uglier. It's pure bliss.

Abby, Matt would totally come over and build shelves for you, but considering that I had to bribe him with sex to build mine...

Abby said...

Oh, so THAT'S how you get Matt to do so much shit for you!

julie said...

What can I say--You work with what you've got!