The improved TV area...

Before:


(click any photos to enlarge)
To recap our TV dilemma... no matter which side of the room the TV sat, it always blocked a bookcase.


Add to that the fact that bookcase shelves housed related electronic equipment (such as the DVD player and speaker in the above photo)...


...and the VCR, cable box, & speaker were permanent fixtures on top of the TV... It always seemed cluttered and messy...

After:

I rearranged the room so that the bookshelves no longer sat on either side of the slider. That one little change freed up this whole corner (which means the TV is no longer blocking anything!).


The cluttered look is now gone... A big yippeeeee in my book! And this TV, although an elephant, has a great feature - it's on casters, so we can easily roll it flat against the wall or angle it toward the sofa or chairs for viewing...


And now, instead of electronic equipment sitting on top of the TV, I have my stone birds and Home Goods lavender...

Oh, there is one more thing on top of the TV - the center speaker sits behind the woven basket, perfectly concealed...

(How cute! Spotty walked by just as I was snapping this photo... He's no doubt heading for the window to do some serious sunning!)

This is how the TV looks after the 'shelf project' I wrote about yesterday. I originally intended for the material to fall to the floor, but I actually like the way it looks with one of my tablecloths as a runner. It drapes down far enough on both sides to hide the ugly TV silhouette that I wrote about yesterday, so I'm just going to leave it as is (for now! I'm sure I'll occasionally switch out tablecloths - or even chenille spreads - for a different look from time to time)...

I picked up this little white nightstand at Target and it's perfect for the CD/DVD player (and the drawer is great for storing CD's, DVD's, and remotes!). I actually need to put the VCR and cable box on top of the nightstand (they're temporarily tucked underneath).

So there you have it - our little TV shelf and room rearrangement project that made a big difference in our family room! Next I'll show you where the bookcases ended up!

COMMENT UPDATE: Yes indeed, that is Clive Pearse from HGTV's Designed to Sell (I love that show!!)... And did you all know that Clive is an animal lover? As a matter of fact, he sits on the board of the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation (an animal rescue group/adoption site whose link I have added to my sidebar)... And I have to admit, although this TV is very hard to work around when rearranging, it is wonderful to be able to watch shows like Designed to Sell on such a big screen!!!

Donna

The good, the bad, and the ugly....

The Good:

A teaser of what the top of the TV looks like now....

A basket of 'faux' flowers (gotta love Home Goods!) and two stone birds that I brought in from my garden. (Can you tell I'm desperately trying for a garden theme to get me through the rest of the cold New England winter?)

The Bad:

What the top of the TV used to look like.... cable box, VCR, and speaker... bad, bad, bad....

The Ugly:

Elephant #1 (from previous post), in all its glory...

Back in November, we (I) decided to spiff up the monster TV and all the electronics that go along with it. These old TV's are not attractive - they have a very narrow 'shelf' top, but as you can see from the side view, they become quite large about half way down... It just doesn't make for a pretty silhouette...

So we (I) decided to attach a larger 'shelf' to the top of the TV (part of my plan to conceal the ugly silhouette). We (hubby) measured and cut a piece of plywood to fit the top of the TV...

Now we needed a way to attach it to the TV... Industrial strengh Velcro to the rescue!

We used the whole package and just kept placing strips on the top of the TV, with the interlocking strips on the bottom of the plywood shelf.

Since the back of the TV had two small flat surfaces (visible if you enlarge the photo), dowels were screwed into the shelf and now rest on those two surfaces for additional support.

The next step was to paint the front lip of the plywood shelf... I thought I'd just have to paint the front strip, but you could see a bit of bare wood on the bottom sie of the shelf between it and the TV, so we carefully removed the shelf (thank goodness all the Velcro strips hadn't been applied to the bottom of the shelf at this point)....

... and I painted a few inches of black on both the bottom and top of the shelf. (I didn't paint the entire shelf because I had plans to cover it.)

Now it's still a big old elephant (there's no disguising that), but it looks a heck of a sight better than it did before. I'll show you the finished project tomorrow.

Donna