Media Center Begins...

Work is commencing on our entertainment/media center.

Photo above...installation of the base cabinet boxes begins.

Photo below...one of the things you have to contend with are all the wires. Is it possible to have a wireless media center ?

Image above...some of you may recall this picture of one of the end units to the media center.

Photo below...the cabinet boxes of the above image. We don't have the doors or drawers installed yet, John is still leveling and attaching them to the wall and to each other.

Photo below...The basic cabinet boxes are now installed. Still have the crown moulding to do.

Photo below...and then figure out how to run all those wires and cables so it doesn't look like a rat's nest...

I'm excited to see what it will look like when finished and yet also feel a tinge of apprehension; will it look the way I envision or will it be a disappointment ?

On The Drawing Board...

Going Through Money Like Water part II

John and I had discussed what we needed and wanted in an entertainment center. First priority was for storage, unless I can come up with some crafty way to use old VHS video tapes...make them into tables...bookcases? If I were Hildi, (Santo-Tomas) of Trading Spaces fame, I'd probably just glue them to the wall.

Photo above...Papa's brand new toy, temporarily housed on our folding buffet/banquet table. Cable black box, video recorder and DVD player keep it company.

Hildi had a penchant for gluing or stapling anything that didn't move or breath to hapless walls and I think that's only because she just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Certainly she had a list of things like; Styrofoam restaurant doggie boxes, abandoned old tires, empty beer cans, small automobiles, somewhere on that list she must have had, dogs, cats, pet goldfish, etc. I always felt sorry for those poor souls that ended up "Hildi-ized" and even now I wonder about the lady who had straw glued to her walls, since she had small children I'm sure she ended up with straw strewn from one end of her home to the other. How long before she freaked out and called her Trading Spaces buddy to say; "Get your arse over here and help me get this _ _ _ _ _ _ _ mess off the walls." Yes, that was definitely THE reason I never considered auditioning for Trading Spaces...my luck I would have gotten Hildie !!!

But I digress ! Boy did I ever digress ! Back to the media center...

John and I probably drew up dozens of different designs, most of which just didn't fit our requirements, which were:

1. It had to be able to store ALL our "media" stuff
2. It had to fit within the space of the wall, and
3. It could not cost more than what we spent on building our house.

photo above...unfortunately Coby tossed out all the designs that were nixed so we'll just have to envision them on the final draft. Our 1st draft had banks of drawers across all 4 of the lower cabinet boxes. Yes it looked nice but...

Ultimately we came up with a plan, albeit a rough plan but it was a start. Thinking it would be fun to be different I designed the whole base of the unit with drawers instead of doors, however once we got to the home improvement center and sat down with Coby, the Home Improvement Center's design consultant, things changed.

Coby really liked the idea and thought it was great to have all the drawers on the bottom and perhaps it was, it looked good but...oh yes that awful contradiction...but where were we going to put John's record album collection ? The drawers weren't really deep enough and it would be an inconvenient way to access our albums . We decided to remove the section of drawers on the two end units and replace them with door cabinets, thereby giving us space for John's records.

Picture above...Imagine the drawers on the 2 bottom end units being replaced with doors.

Deftly, uncomplainingly, Coby drafts this change on his computer cad program and as I watch the units dropping into place on the PC screen, it dawns on me. NO, it's all wrong! Now the unit looks like it is flanked on each side by two overly tall, overly thin towers; an illusion caused by the vertical lines of doors above doors and no space between them to break up this tall linear effect.

photo above...Imagine this end unit with a set of doors on the bottom and then picture the top cabinet with another door cabinet mounted above it, making the upper cabinet 48". Now close your eyes and try to imagine one on each end !

STOP! Coby stop! Don't click finish, don't finalize it, don't pass go and don't collect $200; just give me a moment to rethink this. Okay, how about drawers on the bottom units of each end tower and doors on the middle unit ?

Patently Coby complied and deleted the drawer units. This is much more involved than simply highlighting, clicking delete and then typing in a new word as virtual upper cabinets have to be lifted and moved out of the way in order to remove the ones on the bottom, then the new lower cabinets have to be set into placed and finally the upper cabinets can be replaced above them; exactly the way you'd have to do it real life. It's most difficult, more like impossible, to place a wall cabinet in the air and expect it to stay there without responding to a force we call gravity.

The next draft was better, much better but...well you get the picture, this went on for quite some time. I decided to have decorative glass doors on the flanking end cabinets and we tweaked this and modified that until finally John and I agreed it was the way we wanted. So now Coby begins printing out what must have the 8th or 9th version of our media center design but this time he prints out the sheet with its estimated cost as well. Both John and I concur, the design looks great...the cost however is another story. Waaaay more than we anticipated!

Picture above...yes this is the finale draft of our media center but we really weren't done re-designing. Though we had added drawers the upper cabinets on the rough draft were still a combo of 4 cabinet boxes; two boxes on each side one measuring 30" and the other 18" in height to total 48".

After John and I returned home we sat and studied the plan, went over all the many components, itemized each unit's cost and tried to rationalize some means of cutting it down; getting the dollar signs back into our ballpark instead of the ballpark in Donald Trump's neighborhood. It was agonizing but I decided to forgo the lovely, carved glass doors that were about $200 extra per cabinet and we decided it wasn't necessary to have the 2 end towers be so tall. So instead of having two wall cabinet boxes, one above the other on each side, we could replace the 4 units with two 40" units and save a few dollars.

I was sure that when Coby saw us returning he would probably want to duck inside a tall display pantry and hide, I could even imagine him cowering in the dark, whimpering like a frightened puppy but for some reason he stood his ground and greeted us warmly. Maybe he's used to it? He listened to our requested modifications and began the redesigning process. With time we managed to scratch off a few hundred dollars, however the total was still mind boggling and the dilemma was; do we do it or do without? We decided to take the plunge, to go ahead and order the cabinets and all those little bits and pieces that are needed to put it all together and finish it off. Had we a crystal ball we might not have committed ourselves to this project but one can never tell what tomorrow will bring. And believe me, tomorrow had something in store.

TO BE CONTINUED...

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. . .