A Very Gold Console

More Family Room updates.  To review, first we got rid of the big huge TV and replaced it with a flat screen, then we mounted the flat screen on the wall, hid the wires, and lastly we got a new-to-us console.  Its actually a dresser.  A fake blond wood veener dresser. 

I had a few criteria while looking for this piece.  It had to have specific dimensions, something wide enough to fit on this little diagonal wall, and not too deep because the room is small.  I wanted something that didn't have open shelving because I know I can't keep open shelving looking nice.  And I didn't want to spend too much money when I wasn't sure how well my painting skills would actually work to transform something.

 So here is the "beauty" I found on Craigslist.  $50---sold.  Then I stared reading all of the 'painting veneer' tutorials I could find.  I decided to try using only spray paint, hoping for a smooth finish.

I went back and forth trying to figure out what color to use, and settled on a light gold color, Carmel Latte, by Krylon.

I primed first, using various spray-on primers.  I first made the mistake of using a grey color primer.  Whoops.  I had to sand those 2 drawers down and redo them with the white primer.

 The final pictures aren't very good--sorry.  The end results looks nice.  The hardware is the original that I put on until I can find something better, but it kind of blends right in with the gold.

I still have to add some accessories.

Eventually we'll also paint this room.

---Adrienne

Wires, What Wires?

More progress on the family room.  Let me recap.  First, we got rid of the big, huge TV.  For the past 2 years, the TV wall looked like this.

After hanging the flat screen, it looked like this.  Some lovely wires and a table I put there temporarily to hold the cable box.

And today, it looks like this:

Gosh, my pictures suck!  Anyway, it really looks a ton better.  Really. 

So, here is what we did.  1.  Hid the wires.  2.  Purchased craigslist dresser.  3.  Painted dresser a light gold color.  I still have to add some stuff accessories to the console and we're still working through technical difficulties with the TV but its coming along.

Here is how we did it. 

Hiding the wires.  I read a FABULOUS tutorial on how to hide the flatscreen wires in the wall here.  This tutorial gave me the courage to at least try to do this.  Then I had to convince Alex to help me try.  Anyway.  Here is my version of a tutorial, or at least what we did.

Find a space on the wall between the studs and cut 2 holes with a drywall saw, one behind the TV and one low enough to be covered by the console.

Drop a heavy cord through the top hole and hold the top of the rope while pulling through the bottom hole.  So the rope ends are showing through both the top and bottom holes.

Tie your first wire onto the end of the rope at the bottom hole and pull through.  Untie the cord and drop the rope again to get the next wire.

It wasn't so bad, and looks so much better without 3 heavy black wires hanging out of the TV.  Here are the problems we had:

*  Our 6 foot cable wires weren't long enough to go through both holes and then back up to plug into the cable box.  I ended up cutting a second lower hole that was still low enough to be hidden by the console.  I have to patch the original bottom hole you see in these pictures.  Another option would be buying a longer cable wire.

*  Plugging the power cord in to the rear of the TV after hanging the TV on the wall wasn't easy.  Alex had to hold the TV out while it was partially hanging on the wall mount while I was trying to quickly find the plug with only my hands.

*  Threading the 3rd wire through the small hole was tough because of the first 2 wires taking up most of the room.

Another shot of the wireless flat screen:

I'll talk about the console in a follow-up post.

---Adrienne 

Happy Anniversary



We got some beautiful flowers for our 2nd Anniverary from my inlaws.  Alex also got me some beautiful purple roses.  After the original boquets started to wilt, I had some fun with the fish.

The big one, I forget his name. I call him "big fishie".

Here is the little one, didn't get a good shot of him.

 

Hi fishies!



More Office Updates -- Diploma Wall Collage

I wanted to share some more before-and-afters of our office updates.  If you missed part 1 of the office update you can read about that here.  Here is the wall of shelves before paint and the track lighting.

And here it is lit up in the nighttime pic with the walls painted.  We still need to organize the shelves...

Here is the diploma collage before we painted. 

Another angle.

And here is the new-and-improved diploma wall.  BTW, most of these are Alex's.  I also remounted and reframed one of Alex's water-damaged diplomas using the method I blogged about here.

Thanks for stopping by!!

----xoxoxo   Adrienne

Linking to:



Office Updates--Paint and Light

Here is our office "before".  I only started to take before pics after I was already done taping.  We have a nice wall of built in shelves.

A big huge desk. 

A collage of diplomas and a small extra desk/table.  We really need 2 workstations in here with 4 kids.

The other wall is mainly windows.

We painted with a bold blue/gray color, SW Tempe Star (color matched to Behr paint and primer in one--I love that stuff!).

This room had no ceiling lighting and was dark.  I wanted to try some sort of lighting that we could hang on the ceiling but also plug into the wall as an inexpensive solution.

This is what we ended up with, purchased from HD for $35.  Its track lighting.

We also bought a plug-in cord to connect to the light for around $10.  The track lighting kit came with hardware for connecting to a ceiling pre-wire, but this plug snapped right in.  They are the same brand and the helpful guy at HD told us they were compatible.

Alex getting ready to drill.

We drilled a hole through each shelf (down the middle row of shelves) to kind of snake the cord.  There is an outlet in the bottom shelf.

 Here is a view of some of the holes Alex drilled through the shelves.

Then Alex screwed the track to the ceiling, 2 small screws.  We used wall anchors.  You can see the cord snaked through the holes we drilled.

Then it was a matter of kind of snapping in the 3 light fixtures that came with the light kit.  The cord is barely noticable.

Here are some after pictures of the paint and the new light. 

 

We swapped the bulky brown small table out for this sofa table which gives a lot more space in here.  Not sure if this table will stay.  I really want a comfy upholstered chair in here, but we really need that other desk area.  Darn.  We'll see.

So far we are loving the bold color in here.  I still have to put the diploma collage back up and possibly hang another track light on the other side of the room.  Then maybe declutter and organize all the stuff.

Thanks for stopping by!

----Adrienne

Bye Bye Big Huge Monster TV

So, we've had this TV for a looooonnng time, I think its around 11 years old.  I feel like we're the last family to upgrade to a flat screen.  The picture doesn't quite capture how massive and invasive this TV was in our small family room.  Not to mention that it was just plain unattractive.  I tried artwork around the TV, things on either side of the TV, nothing seemed to look right.  Please ignore my husband's hat hanging on the bamboo (Alex: it served as good luck for the Yankees last season until they lost in the 1st round of the Playoffs).

Being frugal-minded, I ordered this mount from Amazon for about $30.  There was a ton of reviews online and mostly positive so I felt pretty good about ordering it.  This is a basic no-frills mount, but that is what we wanted.  Any similar mount we could find in the stores were at least $75, and most were at least $100.  I have no idea what the difference is with this mount and the others. 

I measured the wall, measured the TV, and used my painter's tape to mark the top and bottom of where we wanted the TV to hang.  Then I looked for the studs (Alex: Adrienne is an expert when it comes to finding studs). 

This was very confusing.  I used the stud finder then nailed a bunch of holes with a thin nail to figure out exactly where the stud was--studs are supposed to be 1 1/2 inches across, but that wasn't what I was finding.  Check out all my nail holes.  The 'S' means I thought is was a stud.  This was way longer than 1 1/2 inches.

After about an hour of contemplation, I just decided to go for it.  I figured that probably was somewhere in the middle of some sort of stud.  Drilling the pilot holes and screwing in the lag bolts was pretty simple.  Just had to make sure the mount was level.

We did have a small problem with the screws that held the bars on the TV.  The screws provided in the kit were too long (even though the instructions said they were the most common sized screws for these TVs).  Alex and I both went to different Home Depots to find shorter screws, he was successful.  Then, we encountered problem no. 2 - the tilt "option" was not being an option for us.  We decided we wanted a flush mount and not a tilt but had a hard time tightening the arms into a mount that would be flush against the wall.  We tried tightening both screws on each arm that we thought controlled the tilt to the point that we were bending the metal where those screws were tightened. We also found a couple of nuts that fit properly to further tighten one set of screws. We also stuck loose screws into a gap and finally seemed to have our flush mount. For some reason, no one commented about this problem in the Amazon product reviews but they did about the length of the screws.  

For now we're using this sofa table to hold the cable box.  Look at all of our lovely wires!  Once we figure out what to put here for a console of some sort, we'll hide them in the wall.  :)

P.S.  I know my bamboo still looks ridiculous.  Even minus the Yankee hat (Alex: maybe I'll try putting a Nats hat up this year).

Thanks for visiting!

---xoxoxoxo   Adrienne

TDC Before and After Party