A pretty new home for our books

Over Christmas break we finally got around to painting our living room! We used some Christmas money to buy 4 really tall bookcases from IKEA and I really didn't want to put them together and screw them into the wall until we painted. So I went to Lowes and Home Depot a few hundred times to get paint samples, and after buying the exact color our walls already were, and a couple strange light browns, we picked one!

A couple of our paint swatches.

We picked Lyndhurst Timber by Valspar. It's a nice light brown color (apparently it's from the orange neutrals collection) that goes pretty well with our green carpet and white trim and bookcases!

Painting is such a messy pain in the ass. I really do hate painting. I will be really glad once we have changed all the rooms to the colors we want.

Then we had to put together all of the bookcases.

Securing the bookcases to the wall per the IKEA instructions. Just in case we want to climb them... 

Almost done! Just need books. 

We bought extra top shelf extensions for our bookcases so they would go almost to the ceiling so eventually we can add crown molding to make them look built in-ish. 

Ta Da! Bookcases! We haven't really bought many books in the last five years, so now I have a lot of book shopping to do. I have a pretty long list, so I'll be making little pit stops at Bright light Books on my way home from work more often!

The yearbook and photo album section! Notice our trophies. 

Favorite series section. This is the section that needs the most filling in. 

The start of our children's library, it's even on the second to bottom shelf so kids can reach!

And of course, my cookbooks that I love but never use!

I'm so excited to have something, especially books, at that end of our living room. Without the Christmas tree that corner looked really sad and lonely.