Finishing Touches

As an addition to my previous post, I wanted to mention another small improvement that we made to our living room.

Those who lived in our condo before us had a large couch that covered the A/C unit that is sticking out of the wall. So when they painted the walls of the living room green, they didn't take much care in painting around the A/C unit (since it didn't show). This is what it looked like:

Well, when we were looking at redecorating the living room, we decided to move the piano in front of the A/C unit, because it hid it more effectively than the bookcase we were using (and it looks nicer on the center of the wall rather than in the corner). However, with the white trim around the edge of the unit, it was still noticeable.

Our solution was to paint the trim green, so that the part you could see sticking out behind the piano would blend in better with the wall and be less noticable. Fortunately, when Jeff bought our condo he asked the owners to leave behind a can paint for each wall color, so we didn't have to go out and buy any paint. Unfortunately, the original paint color doesn't match what's on the wall exactly (as you can see below), but it's close enough that it doesn't really matter.

Before (lovely paint job, huh?)

After (not quite the same color, but close enough)

Here you can see how it blends into the wall much nicer, and I can also use it as a hidden shelf for flower vases.

Living Room Facelift

Jeff and I decided that our living room was too cluttered. In addition to our couch, two ottomans, and entertainment center, we also had two video rocker chairs with nowhere to go and two bookcases taking up wall space. One bookcase was full of piano music, magazines, and games, and the second bookcase was full of DVDs. And our old entertainment center was too small to hold the subwoofer and digital audio control system (for the surround sound), so they were just sitting on the floor. Later in my post, you'll see some Before and After pictures. Unfortunately, I never did get a picture of when we had two bookcases, but they sat side by side next to the piano with the plant stand in between. And the video rocker chairs would sit in front of our porch door (unfortunately, we don't really use our porch, because our neighbors smoke).

So we decided to go shopping for a new entertainment center. We wanted something that wasn't too big - it had to fit on our 7-foot wall space between the fireplace and sliding door leading to the porch. But it needed to be big enough to fit our 40-inch TV, all of our equipment, and we also wanted to fit all of the DVDs, games, piano music, and magazines as well so that we could de-clutter.

We shopped around a bit, and finally found a solution at IKEA! It is my new favorite store. They have a wide selection, and they're quite affordable, too. We found a 6x6 foot black/brown Expedit entertainment center. The space for the TV was barely big enough, but it worked (yay!). Surrounding the space for the TV and equipment underneath are 16 boxes that are each 13x13 inches large. We customized ours by adding in a set of drawers on each side, where we put remotes, chords, manuals, and some of our smaller card games. And everything fit with room to spare!

These two pictures show how it was a tight fit getting the boxes in our car. I'm really grateful our back seat folds down to extend our trunk!

The chaos: before assembly (here you can see both of our bookshelves, but that's not where they went).

It took us about five hours to put everything together. We did it on Monday night for our Family Night. We decided to stay up and finish it all in one shot, so we were up 'til midnight. About 30 minutes of the 5 hours was spent trying to remove the base from our TV. We didn't have the right screwdriver, and it took FOREVER. And then it took a while at the end to connect all of the cables. But we got it all done! (Well, actually, I ended up assembling the drawers the next day, which took me a couple of hours.)

Here's a picture of the finished product.

(Note of interest: these square shelves really aren't made with DVD storage in mind. Our solution, which you can see on the second set of shelves, was to have a second row of DVDs behind the first that were elevated so you could still read the titles. We set the second row of DVDs up on foam blocks that we got from Jeff's work.)

These next pictures show the before and after shots of our living room, so you can see how the whole room changed.

Before: entertainment center too small, with equipment sitting on the floor.

After: everything fits!

Before: was even more cluttered with the video rockers in front of the porch door.

And this entertainment center jutted out further into the room than our new one.

After: nice and clean and organized.

Before: was even more cluttered with a second bookcase in front of the old A/C unit.

After: the piano is now the focus of this end of the room, instead of just being stuck in the corner.

The A/C unit is more effectively hidden, and the video rockers have a place to go.

All in all, we're very pleased with our new living room. And while I'm in a mood to redecorate, does anyone have any ideas on curtains for this window (color, style)?

Now our only concern is... how the heck are we going to move this piece of furniture? I REALLY don't want to take it apart and have to assemble it again... but I guess that's a worry for another day.