Paddy's Room - Books

So, in Boston, we made due with the closet shelf as a bookshelf, knowing that Paddy would need more space for books once we moved on.  I have Craiglook set up with a search for bookcases/bookshelves, but I haven't seen any I am crazy about, so I have started thinking about alternatives...

The only requirement I can think of is that I will need to have some space for books that are not age appropriate yet so that he doesn't destroy all of them already...whether that be a higher shelf, the top of a dresser, etc.

I thought that I could remove a couple of the metal bins from the Brimfield cart in order to store books.  Or maybe I should even remove all the bins on the lower shelf since we are a little worried about Paddy pulling those all the way out and hurting himself!


Or, today, I saw the book slings that two of my fabulous blogging friends, Vanessa and Michelle, have made...very cool, and I think this is even within my limited sewing capability!


Or, maybe I just need some cool bookends.  Again, I liked this idea that Vanessa blogged about because I feel like it is always so hard to find bookends that are heavy enough!  However, Hallie, Brandy and I have tried to work with concrete before and we weren't very successful, were we ladies?


Does anyone have any other ideas?  I am all ears...

Brimfield

Hi all - I haven't felt like I have had anything interesting to say lately, but I have come up with a few random things to share! We have been enjoying our time back in Boston, and we had my parents out here for a week. It was a blast - we took some day trips, and got a ton of work done on the nursery! When my parents are around, we can just crank through projects...I love it, and I love them for being so incredibly helpful! I left for prenatal yoga one night, and came back to a painted nursery - score!!

Anyways, one of our day trips was out to Brimfield, which claims to be the largest outdoor antique show. It happens three times a year...Sean and I had been so excited to check it out ever since moving here. Our main goal was to get a dresser for the nursery. It really was an amazing show - I could have spent oodles and oodles of dough there, that is for sure.

So, Sean and I fell in love with this cart - I know, we were supposed to get a dresser, but we loved the history of it and the industrial feel. It is a 100 year old railroad cart that they used to put luggage from the train onto...and then, the furniture maker built it up to be a large cart/island using an old factory table top. We kept looking at it wondering how this could be a dresser. He also had a bunch of old metal bins from factories, so I started looking at those, and then asked my dad if he could help us build a second shelf on the cart. He said he could, so we got it...and a bunch of bins to use as drawers. YIPPIE. We knew we could re-purpose this piece into so many different places as time goes on as well!

my parents and sean surveying the situation...trying to figure out how we will get this home!

So, once we got home, I hopped on craigslist and found a bowling alley slab for next to nothing. Sean and my dad picked it up the next day and then built a second shelf for our new "dresser". The slab just so happened to match the top perfectly, I was so excited. I still haven't decided if I will leave the bins as is, or paint them a color. We will see. I also need to line the bins with something...I was thinking some fun oil cloth maybe?? Let me know if you have opinions/suggestions!

Here is the cart...or should I say dresser?