Going Through Money Like Water...

And so it begins, a simple project that snowballs into an avalanche.

Photo above...This was taken during the conversion project where John and I transformed an old kitchen cabinet into an attractive coffee table. The old entertainment/media center is shown in the background.

It all began a couple of years ago with our old entertainment/media center. There was nothing wrong with it, it was attractive enough and storage was ample but originally, in our previous home, it resided in John's den. It provided him with his own private TV so that he could watch his football games or golf tournaments while I wallowed in HGTV home improvement programs and girlie craft shows such as Carol Duval. This worked splendidly in our other home as our family room contained a whole wall of built in cabinets that housed TV, stereo, video and DVD recorders and players, storage for record albums, tapes, video cassettes, toys, puzzles, brick-a-brack...you name it and it was probably in there.

Photo above...Old media center, doors all closed.

Photo below...Old media center, door open to show antiquated TV.

All of that however was built in, attached permanently and remained when we sold the house and moved. Our new home had only a blank wall in the family room and that's where John's entertainment center was placed, along with the promise that we would build another unit similar to the one we had left behind. Well in the movies the seasons would be drifting by; a montage of scenes splashing before you. First a vignette of bright sunshine and daisies,then fading into the purples, reds and golds of autumn foliage, then melting into scenes of wintry snow and icicles, and eventually focusing into a cheerful spring garden, filled with pastel flowers and butterflies; these snippets of time would flash before you heralding the passage of time. First one year and then another and now onto the third and the media center remained implanted in the family room.

Photos...Winter- frost on my oregano/Spring-Magnolia blossom/Summer- Fiesta Lantana plant

Perhaps it was our son-in-law that put the bee in John's bonnet, he mentioned how there were numerous sales going on for the big flat screen plasma TVs. In reality our daughter and son-in-law were trying to bring us into the 21st century, hoping to get us to shed our woolly mammoth hide clothing and come out of our cave and into the modern world.

John, being one attracted to electronics like most men, was curious to see what was out there. He spent weeks scouting out the discount stores and electronic stores, studied literature about plasma TV for hours, read Consumer's Reports, searched the Internet and finally settled upon THE TV!!!
I suppose he could have picked out a larger unit, though it was considerably bigger than what we had first agreed upon...yeah, can you hear the ka-ching, ka-ching? Thankfully it's nowhere near as big as it could have been.

Photo above...the new kid on the block, our HDTV sitting on its temporary home, our heavy duty folding buffet table.

We had now committed ourselves; fortunately it wasn't into an asylum, which would have been less expensive than our commitment to this massive blank eye that stared at us unblinkingly. It needed it's space, it's own abode and so we shuffled things around, cleared everything away from the family room wall and drug the heavy, folding buffet table out from under our bed. The old entertainment center was moved into John's den, along with the old TV, making room for the new flat screen HDTV unit and, ultimately, a new media center...however this part of it was still on the drawing board. TO BE CONTINUED. . .