Why is it that you can't just have a TV anymore? My husband is a sports junkie. So along with our TV came the box for the cable, a box for Direct TV (Sunday Ticket apparantly is a must have) and a box for the sound system including a huge base speaker and 4 other smaller speakers and then a DVD player. So that's 4 components and 5 speakers! Sheesh! We had them sitting on top of our big screen tv or a while, but it was really trashy looking. So finally I did something about it.

I got two side towers from Ikea to go along either side of the TV, just basic bookshelf-type boxes but with a door. The door had an inset of plastic - yuck. So I covered that with metal flashing from the hardware store and then glued on colored stones I found at Michael's.

Now to go between the two towers and to hold all this ugly electronic equipment, I literally built a rectangular shaped frame out of plywood, and screwed it all together. I then cut some pieces to make one middle shelf across the entire length and then vertical dividers and screwed the shelf in place and nailed the dividers in place. To finish it off, I sanded the exposed cut plywood and filled any holes with wood putty and was going to cover it, but the lines from the ply looked cool, so I kept them. Then I just stained it all (I used Birch plywood) and then put funky upholstery tacks along the edges to give it a bit of fun.

Voila! Now the components are no longer stacked on my tv, but rather displayed. And it turned out very cool!