KENMORE — What’s been missing lately at the Kenmore Branch Library on Delaware Road is the customary quiet.

The library will resume normal operations Wednesday morning, after a little more than two weeks of closure for a quick but thorough makeover. Originally scheduled to reopen on Monday, the branch will remain closed a few extra days.

Patrons will notice new carpeting, the circulation desk rebuilt and moved, and an improved children’s area. New computers and a lounge area will be available, as will improved checkout facilities and new entry doors.

“Right now it’s a mishmash and chaotic, but it’s going to improve”, said Caroline Rudin, a library page on a momentary break from moving books by the boxful.

All around her was a decidedly non-library scene; books in cardboard boxes, boxes stacked on tables, tables piled high with library resources and heavy, book-laden steel shelves pushed to the fringes of the room. The empty space in the large room was given over construction projects and about a dozen workmen, as wires dangled from the dropped ceiling and an assortment of new equipment and fixtures was installed.

It’s noisy in there, too.

The work was funded by a New York State construction grant approved in 2011, and a matching amount from the Town of Tonawanda, through the office of Town Supervisor Anthony Caruana, totaling $76,805. The library parking lot was resurfaced in 2010, and the regular upgrades to the Delaware Road building give Kenmore’s library patrons a reassurance that this branch of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library will remain and thrive.

The building was opened in 1976 and replaced a 1929 library on the same site, situated between two churches and across the street from a middle school on Kenmore’s oldest road. After the closing two small library branches in the adjacent Town of Tonawanda, there has been discussion in recent years of building a new branch, large and modern, in some centralized location.

The makeover of the Kenmore branch suggests it will see many more days and many more library patrons.

In a cluttered downstairs office full of more boxes of more books, library director Dorinda Darden took a break and listed the changes visitors will notice next week.

“The Town of Tonawanda Library Board of Trustees felt the library should be more welcoming. The children’s area needed to be enlarged, and moved. We needed expanded computers, a lounge area to relax, more electrical outlets, better carpeting and an improved magazine area. The circulation desk will be new, and more efficient. There will be RFID gates (a security feature) at the elevator and the stairs. The new children’s area will get a glass partition. And the new downstairs doors will make us totally handicap-accessible.”

Despite the installation of comforts and technology, the library’s focus remains on its primary element, books.

“We base it on our statistics, and we give our people what they want. We offer a lot of fiction, especially new fiction, as well as magazines and other media.”

Of the hectic remodeling, Darden smiled wearily and credited her staff, the contractors and the Town personnel.

“We’ve been a busy community, working together as a team. A lot of lessons have been learned on how to do something like this. After it’s complete I’ll feel great.”

Downstairs near the front door, Town project manager Dave Decker surveyed the hectic scene but was practically serene in his estimation.

“We have a two-week window and we’ll make it,” he said. “We should have everything completed” when the new doors to the improved library swing open Wednesday.