Lesson Learned
Why is it that when you move into a home, certain things end up where you placed them on the very first day? And then 8 years later, you’re sitting there wondering why the dumb TV is still precariously perched on top of the dresser with a quarter of it hanging off. Why is it that when you watch TV at night, you’re forced to look OVER your husbands ample rump to see the top half of the TV? Why is it that you’ve never gotten off your own rumpus to fix the situation? Well that was my situation and I was finally done with it. We found a going out of business sale at a local Circuit City and purchased a flat screen TV. My husband wanted to hang it on the wall, but I had other plans. We needed a place for the receiver box to go and that wasn’t about to hang on the wall and I wasn’t about to just stick it somewhere again.

My Aha Moment
So I came up with a solution. An 8” deep shelving unit that would go on the wall across from the foot of our bed and not only hold the TV, but would also hold some of the night time reading books that we had strewn all over the bedroom, it would hold the components for the TV and it would hold photos of our wonderful boys. Yeah, I had a project!

Getting Dirty - or Should I Say, Dusty!
My inspiration came from a photo in Architectural Digest and I just made some minor changes. This one was really quite simple, it’s just 4 long boards joined with upright boards or 'stiles' to support each long shelf. I placed some of them symmetrically and some just randomly. Some of the resulting boxes I gave a back to and some I left open so that the wall color would show through. Then sanding - a LOT of sanding. The building of the unit wasn’t the issue, it was the painting.

Have You Ever Heard of Plan Twice, Paint Once? Well Me Neither. Obviously!
Why is painting so hard? Well, it’s not. It’s selecting the colors and style that I wanted to paint that I had a problem with. As you can tell below, I went through several different iterations before I ended up with a simple and straight forward color theme. After experimenting with colors, designs and painting effects only to leave a big fat mess, I sprayed the entire thing black (except for one box which I painted purple with a black drybrush on top for affect) and then painted the back panels a soft green. It’s now sitting at the end of my bed and looks AWESOME if I do say so myself.

Yeah, even this old dog learns new tricks every now and then.
Moral of the story, don’t live with what you don’t like. Do something about it. You’ll be surprised at how creative you really are!

Before the TV just hung out on a dresser, cluttered and just plain ol' ugly.

Here's the blank wall where I decided to put the TV and my newly created display shelf.

I built this piece out of scrap plywood so I had to finish the edges with edge banding laminate trim. You simply iron it on then trim it flush to hide the ugly edges of the plywood.

And here's the finished piece before I messed it up twice with paint before settling on something I liked.

This was my first attempt at a punch of color. Looks like I got punched and it affected my vision. Yuck!

Ha! Here's one of those 'what was I thinking?' moments. Yikes!

Finally, a nice subtle and classy finish that will blend nicely into my bedroom. I left one block purple for a bit of unexpectedness - cuz I'm like that.

And here's the finished piece in my room. I really like how it looks and for whatever reason, it really makes our bedroom more cozy now. Which - is a VERY good thing!

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