Follow up Friday : Kalia's Bookshelves

I'm not sure if I'm going to keep up with this idea of follow up Friday, but I get a lot of questions and emails on the same posts, so I'm going to attempt to answer them all at once here.

A lot of you guys became readers because of all of our hard work with Kalia's nursery, and especially her bookshelves.  They are honestly one of my favorite things in her nursery, and I absolutely love everything that we did in there, so that says a lot!

Without further ado, answers to some of your most burning questions...errr...this is a family blog, promise!

• How far apart did you space the bookshelves?
• They are 13.5 inches from the bottom of one shelf to the bottom of the next.  I took the largest book we had (12 inches) and added 1.5 inches for some head room.  I didn't want there to be a lot of extra space.  I like the look of the bookshelves completely filled.
• What length are the book shelves?
• 5 feet long.
• What about climbing?  That would never work in my house, I have too active of children!
• Kalia's climbing, and has been for a little while.  She's just now starting to understand the word "no".  We can pull with all of our might on those bookshelves, and they don't budge.  We screwed them into the studs in the wall.  Each shelf has two screws.  After we screwed them in, I covered the hole with caulk, lightly sanded it, added another coat of white on top of the installed bookshelf, and another top coat of poly.  We consider those shelves built-ins.  If we ever leave the house, they stay with it.
• What size screws did you use?
• I'm actually not 100% positive on this answer, but I can give you a minimum that you should use.  You need to use screws that are long enough to get through the shelf (3/4"), the drywall (1/2"), and into the stud (1/2"), so I would go with at least a 2 1/2 inch screw.  I think we used 3" ones.
• How far from the wall are the start of the bookshelves?
• ~ 2 inches.  Most walls are not straight though, so make sure you use a laser level and mark points along the way.  That way they all line up with each other, even if they vary slightly from the distance off the wall.  We started the bottom one 2 inches off from the wall, and did the laser level from there.

As for how Kalia likes them, she loves them as well.  She pulls off the books that she wants to look at, flips through them, then says "all done" and we clap our hands when we put them back on the shelf.  She's just starting to learn how to put things back.  Even when she leaves books on the floor, it takes a maximum of three minutes to put them back on the shelf.  As any mother knows, most babies leave a wake of destruction wherever they go, so whether it's in her room or in her playroom (post on that soon!), it's all the same to me!

Do you see the blue cushions poking out from the corner above?  Here's a closer look :

I added floor cushions that used to live in my living room for a little nook for Kalia.  I snapped a few pictures of her 'reading' on different days.  Such a big girl already!  Happy baby = happy Momma!

Because Kalia hasn't learned how to "respect paper" yet, we have all of her hard, edible books on the bottom two shelves.  She can only reach those, so those are her safe books that are pretty indestructible.  The shelves above that are for books that we read to her either early in the morning, before nap times, or before bedtime.  She honestly doesn't have much patience for long books other than her wind down time.

Are there any other questions on her bookshelves that I left out?  Feel free to ask, and I'll update the list above with answers!

Happy Friday everyone, hope you guys have a great weekend!

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