Bookstore Owner Gives Old Books A Second Chance By Turning Them Into A Custom Arch

They're Southwest Florida's largest independent bookstore, and boy do they have a surprise inside.

The owners wrote an article for Bored Panda about the process of taking some old, worn-out books and turning them into art.

Well, no good books, anyway. As they told Bored Panda, some of the books are, "simply at the end of their lives."

That includes "Old investment books from before the financial crash, books with cracked binding, or missing pages."

"I built a frame out of 2×4’s and plywood to provide a stable base," they said.

The books came next. Many were the aforementioned "junk" books, but some had some significance to them!

"I added some books by my favorite authors including Neil Gaiman (well, the store is named after the Sandman Comics), Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series, Andrew Smith’s Ignition (local author), and Kristine Kathryn Rusch."

"Over 10,000 nails were used in [the] construction of the arch."

Once the pillars were secured and bolted to the floor, it was time to move on to step two: adding the rainbow arch.

"The upper ‘rainbow’ section are paperback books arranged and cut into blocks. The colors are from the publishers, and I did not paint them."

The purple books were the hardest to find, and took the longest.

To really give the arch the elegance it deserves, they added some thick, black crown molding to the top.

After that was done, it was time to take a step back and marvel at the finished arch!

Look at that color gradient! The finished arch truly is one big labor of love. They call what they did #bookart, and I think that's the perfect way to describe it!

And, according to Sandman Books, a couple loves the arch so much that they've chosen to hold their wedding under it!

Now that's a wedding truly fit for a bookworm.