December 21, 2009

Cutting Up Furniture

Apparently we're not happy unless we have a project to complete with minutes to spare right before we have company or a holiday. I was just starting to feel like I had Christmas under control when Saturday morning hubby decides we must go buy the big screen TV we've talked about for years. We host the family Christmas Eve dinner every year and that was only 5 days away.

The big problem, though, has been finding a TV stand that we like to hold the big screen. When we bought this house, we got an entertainment center that is 11 feet wide and nearly fills the entire wall of the family room. And the color, that matches our family room tables and kitchen cabinets, is a white-washed maple. We've looked for a very wide TV stand in this color range and never found anything we liked.

So we decided to cut up our entertainment center, taking the shelves or tops off. Talk about scary. Hubby, who is very much a handy man, is more the full-time executive in his day job. He doesn't get to play with power tools in the garage much. However, he bought new blades for his jigsaw and router and off we went.

Here is the original entertainment center, which is actually 5 separate pieces.



Here he is making a cut on one of the shelf units.



Here is one of the pieces with the top cut off. The cuts and routing left raw strips of wood on the top of each side. We purchased a veneer strip that matched very closely, although it can be stained to match even better if necessary. You iron this on with a regular clothes iron to activate the glue. So, yes, any of the nabes out during this process saw us ironing our furniture in the garage. Don't make eye contact with the crazy people!



And here is the finished TV stand with the 52" screen. Thinking about the Bowl games and Super Bowl probably pushed him over the edge this year. And I must say I'm excited to watch the cooking shows on the large screen.



We are thinking about taking the shelf tops that we cut off and turning them into wall-mounted shelf units to hang on either size of the screen. They have pretty crown moulding around the top so this might work well to give us some display shelves. So now we are just 3 days until Christmas Eve and I'm heading out to finish up my Christmas shopping.

9 comments:

Kelli said...

Way too go green guys! It really looks good - very clever. You should have seen our neighbor's faces about 12 years ago when we decided to turn a sturdy wooden bunk-bed into our own "Rainbow System" swing set/fort/sand box! Hoo-boy!

jayaycee said...

Sounds very cool and I'll bet a lot of fun was had on that swing set! We are very happy that we were able to use a piece of furniture we already had for this. Hubby had seen an article about hotels repurposing armoires this way, cutting the tops off to use them for flat screen TVs. The big screen is nice. I have been having trouble reading the screen, especially white lettering and, believe me, it is no longer a problem!

Kelli said...

I refuse to get large-print books. I just....ain't gonna happen. No way.

4badbill said...

This is absolutely brilliant. I'm in awe. My sweetie husband would have cut his arm off by mistake in the doing of it!

jayaycee said...

I agree ... I'll just squint, wrinkles be damned!

jayaycee said...

You know, now that it's done and it looks okay, we just keep looking at each other and giggling nervously. Whew! What if it hadn't worked? We haven't had any limbs cut off, but hubby has taken some lovely dives off ladders!

Sara said...

Okay, I see why you did it and am duly impressed, but may I just take a moment to mourn the passing of the coolest entertainment center ever!?

jayaycee said...

I know -- we really struggled with this. It wasn't cheap but we don't have another place to use it in the house, our garage sale attempts on other pieces of furniture have been dismal and we didn't want to spend money on a new TV stand. After all the pros and cons, it was the most sensible solution. Plus it matches and it's still a nice, heavy piece of furniture.

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