A Puzzling Puzzle

Who would have thought a bookshelf would be so puzzling?

Let me start from the beginning. One Saturday my mom and I were driving around looking at possible rental houses for my mom. In one neighborhood I saw a lady setting white shelves out in her trash pile. I thought they'd be cool to have but they weren't anything special so I kept driving. But after thinking about them more I decided I had to have them. So I turned back around to take a better look at them. I thought they were OK; they'd be good to use in our garage for some storage. While I was looking at them I noticed to home owner come out so I asked to be sure they were trash and she said of course. So I loaded them up. They looked like this (warning they're not that pretty):

After getting the shelves loaded the home owner asked if I wanted to take a look at some other shelves she had, of course I said yeah! So she took me into her garage and I was in heaven. The shelves were amazing, I mean they were in a million pieces but I could just imagine how they'd look. They're real heavy, thick, real wood bookshelves that are held together with rebar. I loaded the shelves and pieces up and headed home. Once home, Matt looked at me like I was crazy, but I was so happy with my score. But, as life got in the way, they just sat in our garage for a couple months until last week. I decided to try to figure out how they went together, there were no directions. I was outside all day, the temp was 108°, trying to figure them out. It was like a puzzle. After finally figuring them out I realized they were way to big for our room. I wanted to put them in our office. So what did I decide to do? Broke them down and created 2 bookshelves. I'm only using one, for now; the other bookshelf is smaller. Here are some during pictures:

All the pieces spread out on my patio

     

While putting the shelves together I decided I wanted to rearrange the whole room. The curtains I moved in from our guest room into our office. They look much better in there. I love the new room so much more now. Here's a before picture:

And after:

(Sorry some of the pictures aren't great)

I still need to add some better artwork and maybe a rug. It's still in progress but it looks so much better!