Book real estate

In our third year here, patterns are definitely emerging:  B&B winters are slow, but that's okay because there's a lot of touching-up, fixing, renovating, etc... to be done.  We've taken full advantage of this time of year and finally got on to of our own affairs, which included bringing many loads to the local thrift shops! 
  Not so with books, of course.  You can never have too many books... but eventually you run out of places to put them all!  So it was that I desperately needed more shelves, NOT just for books but our collected rocks from a vacation in Utah.  


Market Road Antiques in St. Jacobs came to the rescue!  Obviously we wanted something that looked a bit older, but was still in good shape and could shoulder a load.  We found this piece in one of the stalls and went home to measure our space.  It would work!  Then we asked a friend with a truck (thank you Olga!) to help transport the shelving unit, and it was home!  

The unit is stamped "Vilas Canada" on the back:  it turns out that Vilas was manufacturing in Cowansville, Quebec, and made furniture from 1950 - 1980 according to this website.  

From this blog:  "Canadians of a certain age are familiar with Vilas and Roxton, reputable furniture makers, who produced maple and other hardwood pieces in the rustic American style.  There is a lot of this furniture around from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s; it’s very solid and well-made but definitely stuck in a time warp."  

Along with all sorts of homeless treasures, my rocks went from this:









to this:

A place for everything and everything in its place.