A room of one’s own. A whole wall of floor to ceiling shelves of books. I’m sitting in my soft armchair, and the afternoon light filters through the blinds, gently hitting the spines of rows of books. We have no furniture yet, except for this armchair, and those shelves. Living in London, we rented our place furnished, but after years of doing that, when we moved to Vancouver, we wanted a space that we could decorate and things that we could choose, and that would be ours. It feels like coming home, after years of camping.

Our flat has really cozy, mossy green walls, which is unusual for places here. They’re almost always painted a basic white. But I feel like this makes our apartment feel different and more classic, less modern.

For bookshelves, I looked at a lot on Wayfair and other places, but in the end, we came back to these Billy bookshelves from IKEA Canada. I’ve had these before, and they’re really strong and quite sturdy if you fix them to the wall. When you want a large book case, it can be very expensive, but these are great. They come in a range of colours, but I like the dark chocolate colour in this apartment. This size retails for $125, CLICK HERE and there are three along this wall.

The boxes that we shipped had already arrived from the UK, so after we spent a few hours building and installing these, I went ahead and unpacked all my books onto the shelves. I actually have more books coming that are being shipped from Australia, which really proves that I have a problem. ha ha! Though as you can see, some of what’s on these shelves are papers and things that will go into a desk when I buy one.

It feels good to have all my books on shelves again, and it’s nice to have the boxes unpacked. It feels more and more like a home. I absolutely love this room, with it’s wide window that looks onto the street. I feel like it’s the perfect spot to sit and write. And it’s so good to have a space to work that separate from our lounge area. Next time, I’ll show you the chair and rug that I have, and fill you in on the home purchases we’re making as we go.