Our Week in Which Books Begin Moving

Okay, I'm just a wee bit excited here.  I got an email that ended with, "Oh, by the way, you're getting room __."  Finally!  I have a room!  Well, not me, really, but the library has a room now.   Wanna see?

It's not an empty room at this point, so it's going to be a bit of a puzzle to get all the books in and all the random bits out.  

It's got 3 windows on the back wall.

And 2 windows on the front wall.  Ambitious Me wants to add 5 18" tension rods to the library Amazon wishlist and make curtains (or at least valances) to go with each of our themes this year, but I'm restraining myself because Lazy Me probably won't actually do it, and knowing my luck, I'd end up with tension rods that the kids would use for sword fighting.  

The first day we were unleashed in there, the girls and I moved all the chairs and tables out of the way to get a feel for the space.  Then Katie helped me take some measurements and I plotted everything out on graph paper.  It's ~33x23'.  

I've got ideas for how I want things to end up, but I'm trying to hold lightly to those, so I won't be too disappointed if the final arrangements turn out a bit different.  

Remember all those trophies on top of the bookcases?  Some of them are realllly old.  Fortunately, those will not be moving into the new room.  One of the teachers has a plan to make a shadowbox with the engraved bits and get rid of the rest.  

We got to work, and got one whole 10' bookcase cleared out so it can be unscrewed and moved to the new room.  The girls were super helpful in moving books.  

I moved the dusty old trophies, making good use of the new folding stepstool I recently bought.  (I made sure to put a name label on it before I took it to school, so hopefully it will stay in the library.)  

There were a couple of almost empty bookcases in the new room, and after verifying that I could keep those, we emptied them out and brought in the two shelves of biographies.  As I've been scanning and labeling books the last couple months, I've set aside all the biographies that I came across, so they were already all together in the old room.  

I did a rough sort by first letter, and Hannah alphabetized them for me.  

Then we went home for lunch and I fired up Crikey to make a sign.  The next day, we loaded up a big tote of biographies from home and brought them to the school.  

I really cannot adequately express how happy this picture makes me.  I know I still have a long, long way to go in the next month to get the whole library functional, but this one little corner is a thing of beauty to me.  

My reality check.  Still such a long way to go.  

Of course, not all our time was spent at the school.  Here's Grumman, helping me get ready for tutoring.  (BTW, "osteoporosis" is not an easy vocabulary word for an ESL student.  Who comes up with these??)  

And here's the Grum, helping me stamp books.  I use a pen or other object to keep the covers slightly open until the ink dries.  

The puzzle was finally completed.  I decided to glue this one, since I don't think anyone will ever want to do it again.  It's not an easy puzzle.  

Katie's project from the Crayola book.  Hannah did one, too, but I haven't snapped a picture of it yet.  

Grumman doesn't know this yet, but he's going to have a friend coming for an extended sleepover soon.  I need to double up on our Kitty Poo Club boxes.  (Best litter box solution, ever!  We've been using them for 2 years now.)  I look forward to seeing how he interacts with another adult cat, and sharing cute kitty pictures.  

This coming week, Jack and I are going to a homeschool curriculum sale (as sellers) on Monday.  Hoping to clear out some stuff we won't be using any more and generate a little cash in the process.  

Tuesday, we'll start taking more of the house books to the school.  

Current library stats:  2,400+ books entered in the system.  1,000+ books fully processed, with barcodes, ready to shelve.  It's been a bit discouraging to not see the total books in the system increasing.  Even though I'm still adding books, I've been weeding out a lot of duplicates, so my numbers aren't really climbing like they did in June, but the quality of the content is improving.