I’d love to have space for a library with high enough ceilings to do that.
Of course if I did have a great-room space I’d have to fit it with both a spiral staircase and a slide of some sort (perhaps fireman’s pole), Just Because. So the net strikes me as an entirely reasonable addition.
I really like the idea of combining a formal library with a few highly informal elements. Same reason my display cabinet contains both genuine and mock elements… fossils, dragon fossils, a stone axe head, a bit of pottery suggesting that Aztecs interacted with the Great Old Ones, …
One of my pet peeves: Too many people confuse serious (which is an attitude) with solemn (which is a pose). A kid working on a puzzle is very serious, and very far from solemn. That’s the healthiest attitude, I think.
Yeah, i come from a long line of ‘books > wallpaper’ folks, but DAMN, do I ever want a proper, wood-lined library. with those ladders on rails. I will eschew any other rooms bar kitchen and bathroom for that.
Undecided whether I’m going to fully panel it (I sorta like the old wallpaper), but the second largest room in my house is in progress toward that end.
Rockler Woodworking has parts for swooshy ladders. And for one flavor of moving-bookcase secret doors. (Possibly two; their lift-top bed hardware could make a great trap door cover. And they’ve got two different variants of Murphy beds.)
As far as the leather armchair goes: What would be even better would be one that I saw in a museum, which is a big fancy chair of that sort which is ALSO a Library Chair (ie, flip the top over and it becomes a stepladder). It isn’t hard to find plans for library chairs, but I’d love to see plans for that one.
My biggest problem w/r/t the library has been settling on a style for the bookcases. I want to set the room’s style at late-19th-century. Unfortunately, there are a huge number of different woodworking styles actively being built at that time, ranging from rather ornate to Arts & Crafts plain. “Barrister” bookcases originated about then. (Modular bookcase boxes actually go back much farther, partly to make libraries easier to rescue in case of fire.) So I’ve been dithering over exactly how formal it should be, and which “formal” it should be.
Friends of mine raised the roof of their ranch house to add a second floor, and devoted half that space to their library, with open rafters and a huge celestory window under the gable and window-to-window bookcases (plus some additional bookcases). VERY nice room.
My father’s office had not one but two full formal libraries. (Single floor, though.) That’s part of what’s driving my “I need one”, I suspect.
Yes- my parents’ “library” (as in the room where most of their books are kept) has a ceiling that’s probably about 14ft IIRC. It’s definitely not “two floors”, though- it’s just that their house was built in the 19th century, and that’s how they were built then. All the ceilings on the ground floor are that high.
Go for Eclecticism. Yes, it’s the easy way out. But agonizing over the decision will just keep you from doing anything at all. And done properly it looks very nice indeed.
Currently what’s up there is a random collection of shelving – student-quality rescued and homebuilt. It isn’t sufficient, and it doesn’t use the full height of the walls effectively, and it ain’t purty.
