It was a long time coming. After 4 months in our new house, Kathy & I finally have books on bookcases. And there was much rejoicing.

The plan from the beginning (last fall) was to set up our 3 big bookcases on the sun porch at the front entrance of the house. Two problems: (1) the floor in that room is noticeably slanted; and (2) three of the four walls in that room had non-functional baseboard heating units, long since disconnected from the radiator system, taking up space along the wall (and providing shelter to unknown numbers of spiders). So, all we had to do was remove the baseboard heaters and level the floor, and then we could put up the bookcases.

Oh yeah, and also figure out how to attach something to a brick wall, so that the bookcase against that wall wouldn't topple over. So I guess that's 3 problems.

Bringing that plan to fruition (removing the baseboard heaters, cleaning & repainting the exposed wall paneling, caulking the gaps, installing baseboard molding, leveling the bookcases, and attaching various fixtures on wood & brick walls) took about 4 months. Most of the visible progress happened in the past 2 weeks, but the mental preparation was an important part of the process too.

Equally important was calling my sister about a dozen times, because she has more experience in these kinds of remodeling & demolition tasks.

But now we have the bookcases up, and the whole process is documented in pictures here.