In LOVE with a bookcase

At church we have a guy, Brother David, that does great wood work. He built the sets for the Christmas program last year and has done most of the trim work in our new building. I half jokingly said something to him about building me a bookcase for my homeschool stuff and he quite seriously asked for a sketch and said he would love to do it. I did not have any particular design in mind but knew I wanted a 4 foot by 4 foot square and about 14-16 inches deep. Building is his passion and so I left any other design details up to him and this is what he came up with....

Isn't it beautiful!!??!! He had an extra sheet of maple wood left over from a previous job and within a week of us discussing it, I had a gorgeous new handmade homeschool bookshelf to the tune of $15. Yep, you heard that right, $15. That was his cost for the piece of wood and that is all he would charge me. I am totally in love with this piece of art and have plans running through my head on other projects I would love Brother David's help with.

I had to polyurethane it myself so it has been sitting empty for quite some time but I finally got it done last week. This week I have spent time cleaning, organizing, and purging my homeschool stuff. I got rid of our old barely staying together, walmart particle board, 15 year old bookcase and now all of our school stuff is nice and neat and all in one place. We normally "do school" at the kitchen table and this shelf is in a corner of the kitchen as well. Very convenient. The shelves look pretty full right now but I have things laid out and spread out for easy access but we actually have tons of space still available if I were to arrange things differently. The file cabinet will be used for storing the kids' notebooks, past and present. On top of the file cabinet is an over head projector that actually belongs to the church. Come to think of it, I really need to take it back. I used it for some drawings I made for the missions conference and keep forgetting it is here. I really wish I had one of my own, I could use it for soooo much. Under the projector is my box of scrapbooking and crafting supplies. It has been tucked away and forgotten in the laundry room so maybe now that it is more accessible we will use it more. The green basket barely visible in the bottom corner is our book basket for library books. Now that things are neat and organized I guess we better start thinking about starting some school.