The Bookshelf

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! I did - and I got some great gifts for my apartment! Hopefully I'll get to all of them, but I'm going to start with the present from my dad and stepmom, since it's been consuming most of my night.

I have been coveting a particular bookshelf at Pier 1 for months, and now that it's sitting in my living room I'm so happy. Thanks Dad and Nicole!

Okay, let's preface the story with this. Me, little 5-foot-tall Meghan, dragged this box....

....up these stairs....

....all by myself. For a little context, that box was a good 4 inches taller than me. Luckily, I remembered to lift with my back, with a jerking, twisting motion.

I've never put a real piece of furniture together before, so I was little nervous. But I was so excited about the bookshelf that I decided to go for it anyway.

I wasn't sure what any of these were for, so I just threw them away.

It was pretty easy and straight forward up until this point. When I had to put the other side on is where I ran into trouble.

Both of those triangular shelves had three little dowels on each side that had to fit into the sides of the bookshelf. It took me about 45 minutes to get them all in. Either one fit in and the other five didn't, or five fit in and one didn't. But I eventually figured it out.

Voilà!

And then the best part - putting stuff all over it! The style is called "bookseller" because those triangular shelves are obviously meant to hold books. I think it's really unique and pretty, but I need to get some more books now that I have two bookshelves to fill!

So far I'm really happy with it. I think it looks so nice and really goes well with the rest of my furniture. I felt like my living room was missing just one more piece, this makes it feels complete.

Now, who the hell is going to clean up this mess??