New (Old) Library Ladder

Two pieces of good and related news to share: 1) I found a library ladder on Craigslist and 2) very soon I will be taking the ladder for a roll in front of our new bookshelves, leg out, Belle style.

I just have to nail down the style of the shelves, which is turning out to be the hard part. I thought the tricky part was going to be finding the ladder, which actually was a breeze!

I found a couple of options on eBay, but every ladder was like $800 or more and I just felt like that was a silly place to spend a grand, so I held out for the deal I knew would eventually come my way. I had 'library ladder' on my Craigslist List (don't you have one?) for a while and I'd been checking every week or so for anything new. I was surprised at how often the rolling ladders came up for sale here! None of them were quite tall enough though (most were around eight feet), but finally this 11' vintage oak beauty came up for the shockingly fair price of $250.

I called and the seller was home and ready to show me the ladder and before I had time to even really think through how I was going to get such a long thing home, I was on my way over to buy it. Luckily ladders hook over front seats easily and the seller didn't live all that far away from me. :)

We want to have some cabinet storage in the bottom of the shelving and I've been thinking something wide and simple would fit the dimensions best. Something sort of, kind of like this Robsjohn-Gibbings credenza:

images via 1st Dibs

I threw this very rough sketch together and now I'm letting the ideas sort of sit. The rod for the ladder is two shelves down and the rectangles at the top are lamps.

I want the side walls of each column of shelves to be thick and lightly framed out with flat trim, sort of like these inspiration images.

Parish-Hadley

Victoria Hagen

Elle Decor

House Beautiful

I sort of really love the sconces on the front here, but I think the long bar lamps are going to be the cleanest look.

Elle Decor

The plan is to have the top of the shelves meet at about the bottom of the pitch of the ceiling, which is about 15' up! Crazy high.

I'm so excited to get this project underway. We had giant bookshelves in Brooklyn that I loved and I miss, but this time with the new ladder, we'll be able to get the books up at the very top (and not to mention getting to dust said books!) without any problem. :)