Manolo for the Home

If you, like me, have more books than you know what to do with but aren’t willing to donate them to a books for teachers program, then you may just have more than a passing interest in bookshelves. You’re missing out if you’re not stopping by Bookshelf now and again. It’s the blog for booklovers, bookshelf enthusiasts, and everyone else who gets off on storage solutions.

Alex Johnson, creator of Bookshelf and author of Shedworking: the alternative workplace revolution, also has a second blog, Shedworking, which highlights the best in tiny little dwellings meant for so much more than storage.

I love to blog hop, moving from one to another by following random blogroll links. It’s fun, it helps me to better understand the roll of my own links section, and I invariably find myself reading something awesome. It may take a few jumps to find those best-of-the-blog-world type sites, but the time I spend sitting at my desk nearly always proves worth it!

To illustrate, it was just yesterday that I happened upon It’s (K)not Wood, a blog celebrating all things “faux bois.” Written by Emilyn Eto and Jonathan Lo, this blog highlights the best in wood that isn’t actually wood.

The latest post introduced me to this faux wood wedge shelving from West Elm.

Neat, yeah? And not what I was expecting at all. If I were to create a blog about fake wood, it would probably be filled with lots of posts dissing the nasty faux wood paneling The Beard and I encountered in so many of the houses we looked at when shopping for somewhere to live. Ugh. You can paint over it in the short term without it looking too bad, but you’ll always know it’s there.

Luckily, faux bois is typically a lot nicer than that. Here are some of my (clickable) favorite things, all done up in white:

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If you’re into stuff for the home, you probably already know that there are 80 billion jillion time wasters out there in Intertubes land. Being that this is the case, I can offer up another time waster without feeling guilty because I know that I will not be responsible for ending your employ or your relationships.

I already know from your comments that at least some of you are into things like Freecycling and furniture hacks, so at least some of you will get a kick out of the stuff at Superuse.

A quick look around my home tells me that I’ve never re-purposed anything to the extent you see on Superuse. I haven’t, for example, turned an old television into a fish bowl or made a museum-worthy stepping stool out of old glass bottles. My paltry claims to fame usually involve turning an oldeat up desk into a farmy kitchen table and things like that. I am definitely not l337 when it comes to my home decor. Not yet, anyway. I’m working on it.