Change of Plans?

Hum... so I got to thinking, I know dangerous, but I was wondering who I knew who might have some vintage windows hanging around.  The first person who popped into my grey cells was my skiing & boating friend Chris Stebbins, aka the Eugene craftsman design-build guru.

Well it turns out Chris was re-modeling a place over on College Hill, built around 1907 and just so happened to have a few ripped out windows sitting around.  I picked through the pile & cleaned off some of the paint last night.  This would radically alter the design, but combining these two windows would make a great door for our library box.

OK... now I need to track down someone with a table saw to square the bottom edge of the half circle window.  Then it's back to the drawing board for building around the top window.  I was already a bit leery of my first box as the plywood had been out in the weather for a couple years and the wood was warped. 

Back to the drawing board....  What do people think?  Better?  Funky?

The Build I

Step # 1, sketch out some idears:

Step # 2, rummage around the back shed for materials: Perfect, an old shipping box.

Step # 3: cut it in half, add a back & some shelving runners

Enough for one evening... fun, fun.

The Idea

This all started one weekend when my neighbor Tom Pugh was out wacking some weeds across the street. We live near the intersection of Whitten & Storey in south Eugene. Whitten goes down hill from its intersection with Storey and Tom was helping the neighborhood by keeping the weeds down so folks could see around the corner.

We were chatting and I mentioned to Tom about Little Free Libraries that were popping up in Portland, Eugene and all over the place.  Wouldn't it be cool to have a box here and share books with our neighbors? The conversation ensued and on July 4th I sent out a few pictures and floated the idea to our neighbors.

There was a new box installed in South Eugene adjacent to Spencer Butte middle school which looked well made and  showed one approach:

 

Then on subsequent trips to Portland I spied a few more ideas:

 

A series of emails went back and forth through the neighbors and we met up this last Sunday night to discuss our project.  Our local utility EWEB has a water tank and open field adjacent to the Whitten/Storey intersection and since folks regularly walk by this area and use the space for dogs, soccer, or whatnot, we thought the space between the sidewalk and the field would be a natural choice.

Our first meeting yielded six neighbors, eight cinder blocks (to help flatten the site), four 2' x 4' plywood sheets, various pressure treated timbers, ideas for a bench along with the library box, rapid fire discussion of what everyone's been reading this summer, talk of potlucks, and a few tentative times to get together & build.  

Shazam, things were starting to happen.  I had previously talked to the City which had approved of our project and yesterday EWEB also approved of our plans.  The actual site is on the City's right of way, but we wanted to ensure that both the City & EWEB were copacetic to the idea.  Now it's time to start cracking and build something.