A Porch and a Pile
So pretty much as soon as we could after the floors were finished, we started moving things over. The furniture was nice (two rooms of furniture have been clogging up our living room at the rental for a couple years), but my first priority was to get the books moved over, sorted, and shelved. Getting this done before we fully move in will keep it from basically destroying our lives while I get the work done.
First, in an epic feat of four days of hauling boxes, we moved over about 64 boxes of books. After this photo was taken we did one more load and filled out that third row. And actually there are still a couple boxes worth of books at the rental, but those can be handled later.
What's happening with all these books is that I'm unpacking them, cleaning them (dust settled on them in the boxes; all I need to do is brush it off and wipe the covers), scanning them into our library on LibraryThing if they have a barcode, entering the ISBN if they have one, or manually cataloging them if not, sorting them into piles roughly by Dewey Decimal subject (I have some thoughts about Dewey Decimal, and they are not all polite), and eventually I will sort them more finely inside those subjects and put them on shelves.
My system is generally sorted by subject, then by author, then by publication date for non-fiction. Fiction is sorted by author and then by publication date unless it messes up a series. I don't sort by genre, though I do have some books in paperback that I don't put on the main bookshelf because they are books I like to read before bed -- pre-vetted to be good books to relax with.
There are roughly 3000 books to go through, so it's been a bit of a task. That's been my last several days. And because there are some really messed up records coming from LibraryThing's various sources, I also have to do extensive data cleanup as an ongoing task. I spent a couple hours fixing the accents on some French names, for example. But that's less critical than getting the records in there and doing the sort.
Upstairs, I got a little celebratory and rolled out the first rug. The recommendation from the finish manufacturer was to wait five days before putting rugs on the flooring, so I waited five days. Then I rolled this puppy out. The rug, that is. Bunny did no rolling.
And, of course, since all this is happening inside, things have also been going on outside. The carpenters were back for a week, working on the side porch.
It feels like a real room now. Between the columns we will have screened windows. This is really going to be a great place to hang out when it is finished.
This week we resolved a bunch of details of how the jambs of the door and windows will look, and precisely how the trim will work above the windows. We're heavily copying the existing windows on the house, plus some old photos of similar houses.
I think it looks pretty amazing. A few things are a little puzzly to work out, but we've done some full-size mockups and they help a lot.
The contractor and I worked out a deal where his finish carpenters come over and work on this when they have space between other jobs, so their calendar is full and I eventually get a side porch. As the summer draws to a close we are getting them for a week here and there. Which is fine; I'm in no rush to finish the side porch since we can live in the house just fine while they work on it.
posted by ayse on 08/24/19