I’ve wanted a Little Free Library to share with my community for a while now. I love the idea of a place where you can share and give books freely. But the timing wasn’t always right. For a while I lived in the country where no one would walk by it. And then we had so many house projects that it got pushed pretty far down the list of importance.

I finally had a little time to dedicate to this project over the holiday break, but I didn’t have a lot of money. And with building anything, the costs can really add up. If you buy a Little Free Library from the organization with the post, it’s about $400. I know it benefits a good cause, but I don’t have that much to spare right now.

So for this project, I challenged myself to build this library for less than $100. And I did it! My total came up to $88.92. This was mostly thanks to the fact that we had a lot of leftover materials from building the porch and chicken coop, but I think other folks could replicate this project by using things they had around the house, thrifted or found for free on places like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.

Here’s the video on how we did it:

And here’s an alternative link if the above video doesn’t work: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJW4RSuV/

This was a project that I’m super proud of and I’m happy that I could share with my community.

I’ve already seen people using it! I want to shout out the window at them, but I’ve been restraining myself. Haha!

Do you have a Little Free Library in your community? I’d love to hear about it!

– Melanie