Re-vamping the Reading Room

When we built our house in 2008, we used the open space concept of the honeymoon house we’d stayed in in North Georgia as our plan and my husband drew it on a napkin for the contractor who built it. I requested three things: front and back porches, dual “thrones” in the master bathroom, and a reading room where I could see rain, sun, and wildlife out the windows. I measured and found bookcases that completely covered two walls, and I ordered comfy sink-down-into-a-book-reading chairs like they used to have at Barnes and Noble back in the day. It was my dream room, but with more and more work demands, I had less and less time to sit and read. Books spilled out into the bedroom and other rooms of the house, and I had to pare down the obsession by donating many of my beloved volumes. Shelves were buckling from the weight with the way I had adjusted for heavier and taller books. The chairs had faded from the intense sunlight in the room. It only got worse last year when the trees were harvested for timber and the sun siphoned all the rest of the color from the chairs.

I didn’t want curtains where trees had always been our “outdoor curtains,” but it was blinding in the room, and the windows acted like a glass oven door sending the temperature through the roof. The larger windows overlook a butterfly and bird garden that I want to be able to see without the interference of drapery. My beloved Schnauzer Fitz loved looking out these curtainless windows on the faded ottoman so much that that he is buried right beneath them, as is Archie, a rescue given to us by a former librarian and my black and tan Dachshund Roxie, who moved back to Georgia with me after an awful divorce. It’s a regular pet cemetery underneath the reading room, but there was no choice about the curtains; they had to be installed. The first thing I did was get tension rods with room darkening curtains so I would not have to install hardware in the casings. And I reluctantly put up those sworn-off window treatments.

Then, when Dad left us in June 2025, my brother and I kept the Barrister bookcases as treasures that we remember holding “the most valuable books” he had collected. I sold all 6 of my original bookcases, replaced them with 3 Barristers on one wall, and started over with the room, beginning to redesign it with retirement – and lots more reading – in mind. I also came up with a plan to manage book breeding. My brother and I had given Dad a Little Free Library to go outside on his street corner for him to start paring down his book collection, but he’d never gotten around to putting it together. My husband found a Phillips Head and magically built it out for me, and we brought it home from the island. I haven’t figured out whether it’ll go in the community somewhere or whether I’ll take it to campsites for folks to take books, but it will be part of the population control plan. I also use Libby and the library more now than ever.

The goal was to redesign the reading room on a dime with existing items. I’m not a fan of clutter…..except when it comes to cozy book-filled nooks. With books, somehow I’m a complete hoarder-go-overboarder. But as a disciple of Robin Wall Kimmerer of Braiding Sweetgrass fame, I also like to keep the simple concept of repurposing and reusing what is on hand. Because every fixture is in some way the descendant of earth or tree, a leaf from the branch of natural resource. I started by stripping the faded chair and a half of its cover and repurposing an old channel quilt as a new chair cover. I swiped a rug from another room, and then for the finishing comfy seating touch, I brought in a new throw recently received as a retirement gift from a friend – – and it makes the room pop with style and reminds me of her each time I sit here and read. She knows me well – – the throw says, “I can’t stay long, my dog is waiting.” It’s draped over the chair where Ollie sandwiches himself between the chair arm and my right hip and Boo settles onto the back and wraps himself around me like an airplane neck pillow, and we all sink down into the soft cushions and get lost in nap or story.

Next, I took a candle shelf and added the “Books Read This Year” sign one of my daughters sent me for Mother’s Day. I updated my number to 30 and selected the lowest Barrister to showcase it. I put a fairy light tree next to it for ambience, and on one branch I placed an ornament given to me by a book club member who’d taken all our 2025 books and made miniatures of them to go inside a clear bulb and an ornament from a friend who recently visited the redwoods in California and sent me a wooden cutout with a gold hanging thread. The room still needed music, so I brought in a Smart TV from Dad’s house and programmed it so I could put fall jazz on YouTube and have a seasonal backdrop for the room. I brought in a floor lamp for a corner from the living room and made the small fireplace we’d used at the base of the bed in the Little Guy camper the permanent small fireplace in the reading room (it’s a space heater, but we can use it without the heat part in the summer). An old farmhouse stool sits by the chair to hold my coffee. And a painting from the same friend who gave me the throw will be hung next to the glass French doors leading back into the bedroom once I get a box of picture hanging hardware. The only new things I’ll need are a new unfaded ottoman – which I might be able to locate on Marketplace – and a hook for the binoculars I use when I see little rabbits at the edge of the brush or owls and hawks in the branches across the farm.

It’s a work in progress, but it’s the kind of work that’s fun and comes without buyer’s remorse over needless purchases. And while I love sunny days, I am secretly praying for rainy and snowy days where I can read the day away without feeling like I should be anywhere else.

And our favorite Atlanta weatherman tells us it’ll be my kind of winter…..come bundle up and sit with me and read!