Looking Out To Sea

We’ve been neatly sidestepping the “massive pile of books, slowly growing” issue for… well, long enough anyway. And just at the point where it seemed we’d make our merry way to IKEA and find something suitably jolly-sounding — Billy or Lindesfarne or similar — I had one of those crazy ideas that stalls us for many weeks or months to come.

We were at an art exhibit at the Corn Exchange before Christmas, discussing mahoosive paintings. We do have a couple of pictures up in the flat, but it wouldn’t be terrible to have more, or at least space for more. But the only big wall left in the flat is where the bookshelves would go.

I had an interesting thought. The problem is that we have too little storage space (or maybe we have too many books? I’m not sure) to display everything nicely. We’d also like to keep as much wall space as we can. I imagined some kind of work surface, maybe about waist height, with all the books stored underneath. But they would be side-on bookshelves, that slid out on rails like the wardrobe space we had in our old flat. In fact, the nearest thing I can think of are full height versions used in kitchens — from the front they are quite slim, but seem to be quite effective.

We had a visit today from Jackie and Carley from Ampersand to discuss it. I gave them some sketches, showed them a photo of the kitchen equivalent that provided the inspiration, they measured the wall and were off. Now it’s just a question of waiting to see what they can come up with. Quite alarming, really.