Book lovers of South Jefferson County are building themselves a bounty.

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21 master carpenters Kelley Bronaugh of Little Wing Woodworking and Trey Cole from south Carolina will be leading the assembly and painting of three Little Free Libraries at the Brinnon Community Center.

“This is the start of many events that we’re hoping to do,” said Katherine O’Leary-Cole, secretary/treasurer for the North Hood Canal Chamber of Commerce, which is sponsoring the event.

O’Leary-Cole’s husband has already created a prototype for the build and will have each of the pieces cut and marked in advance so there’s no chance of losing fingers to saws.

“The styles are all based around these old windows that we’ve picked up,” O’Leary-Cole said. “We really like to use old materials because — why not?”

“There’s a similar design for them, but the design is based off of each of the windows,” she added.

The master carpenters will walk volunteers through the steps of assembling the precut pieces before allowing everyone a chance to get creative with their decoration.

“We hope that’s going to be pretty eclectic. We want them to look nice. They’re going to be in public spaces, but we want kids to have some freedom as far as how they look,” O’Leary-Cole said.

Including the pre-assembled model, there will be four Little Free Libraries to decorate, with two set to be placed in Brinnon and two in Quilcene.

“We’ve gotten a ton of interest since we’ve actually said we’re going to build these,” O’Leary-Cole said. “A lot of HOAs [homeowners associations] have reached out to us. Which is great and we would love to do that in a future phase, but for the first one we really wanted to concentrate on spaces that were available to everybody.”

One will be placed at the Dosewallips State Park, another at the Brinnon Community Center, and a third at the Gearhead Deli/Windermere building in Quilcene.

“My concern with the project is you have this momentum and you get everything started and I want to make sure that a year from now that they’re being maintained,” O’Leary-Cole said.

To help facilitate, she’s started a Facebook page where people can post the state of the libraries as well as future community builds.

A number of books have already been donated to the cause, but more are always welcome.

To find out more, go to the Little Free Libraries of the Emerald Towns page at facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087495665833 or email k.olearycole@gmail.com.