With the room ready for building, dad and I started the day by shopping for all the timber we’d need to act as various supports for the bookshelf. Not only do you want any bookshelf to be affixed to the wall, but if you are planning on building it in, those shelves need to be VERY secure. Otherwise, you might find that one day it could all come crashing down, tearing your wall and cornice with it*.

But back to the shopping.

We needed wide batons which would be mounted onto the walls (screwed into the studs behind the plasterboard), floor supports (to prop up the units and allow for a generous skirting board as is the case in the rest of the house), and blocks to sit between each unit to create the ‘spacers’ (which would later be covered by the detailed timberwork).

This is a time for a long car, preferably with roof-racks.

Once the various lengths of various timbers were in the house – and possibly after lunch – we began work on finding the (at times elusive) studs and mounting the wall batons. The reason this is important is that to be as structurally stable as possible, you need to connect and lock into other structural supports. The batons would allow us to easily connect to the support from the wall studs, and we’d be able to connect each bookshelf to the batons. Make sense? If not, just know that my entire house will fall down before those shelves ever crumble.

The heights of the batons on the different walls also relates to where the supports are needed for the various Ikea Billy units. Remember, there are full-height, half-height and extension units on the full-height (high ceilings allow for extra books).

Before anyone asks, yes, there are words on the wall where the air-conditioner used to be. No, I will not tell you what is says.

*Possible over-dramatization.