Memorial Day Weekend Project

With the boyfriend on a business trip and a 3-day weekend looming, I’ve decided to participate in that fine American tradition of the Memorial Day Weekend DIY Project.

This particular project is something I started over the winter.  The goal: to fix this situation…

…by DIYing a proper media cabinet.

As inspiration*, I looked to DoorSixteen’s “Fauxdenza,” a floating storage unit that Anna created with simple IKEA kitchen cabinets.

As Anna pointed out, being able to see the entire stretch of floor does make a room look bigger.  And my space is even tighter than Anna’s, so the float factor seemed pretty key to me.  My little TV wall is so small, in fact, that I could only fit one cabinet mounted horizontally.  Like so:

Yeah.  It was an improvement, but it still wasn’t great.  The length of the TV and the cabinet were too similar.  I lived with it like that for a few months, debating how to finish it, until the plan finally came to me:  lengthen the cabinet with a book cubby on each side.  And cover the whole thing with a funky industrial wood top, to connect it visually with the pipe shelving unit.

This plan required carpentry skills, however.  And if there’s one thing I regret about college (one thing??  How about most things), it’s that I didn’t learn any real carpentry skills.  So I’m faking it.  But so far, so good!

This is the left cubby.  A little sanding, some paint, some screws, repeating the process for cubby #2… this project should come together in no time!  I have 48 hours to get ‘er done.  Then, finished or not, I’m off to nom some BBQ.

*If you’re at all interested in seeing what inspires me (house-wise, style-wise AND food-wise!), I’ve started cataloging some idea on Pinterest.  Pinterest is a nifty visual bookmarking tool that lets you grab images from the web and post them to “boards” of your thematic choice.  It’s also a place where people compulsively post pictures of very, very thin womens’ stomachs with the tag “fitness!!!”, which is a sad side effect of our culture’s bullshit beauty standards, but if you follow my boards I promise to spare you such nonsense.