On Shelves and TV Mounts

Wow, long time no blog, huh?  Much of the reason is because I’ve started a new job with a place called Prime Controls.  We program PLCs (the things that controls pumps and stuff at water/wastewater plants, oil rigs, and even Dr. Pepper!).  It a completely new field to me and its taking a while to get into the swing of things.

But enough about that!  As the title says this is about shelves and TV mounts.  Amy and I have constantly been working on the TV location since we moved into our home.  The only place for it really is on the fireplace, but there are lots of things in the way there. 

So the first thing we did was take the mantle down.  It protruded far away from the wall meaning the TV had to sit on the very end of the TV stand.  One good push from the cat would knock that TV right off to its untimely demise.

With the mantle gone things were good for a while.  The TV could sit far back on the stand and was safe from curious cats.  But the area itself  still created a lot of clutter.  Wire were strewn all about, the stand itself was large and detracted from the natural feel of the fireplace, it just didn’t work for us.

Ideas were tossed all around, we considered knocking a hole in the wall next to the fireplace and making a recessed shelf area where all the equipment could sit so we could get rid of the stand and mount the  TV, but we didn’t want to do anything so drastic to the home.  It didn’t really seem like the kind of thing that was good for the resale value of a home one day. 

Suddenly it came to us.  We already can’t use the fireplace because the TV is in the way (and because we had covered up the hole with Plexiglas to cut down on drafts), so why not build a shelf in the fireplace to hold the equipment?

But no no, it wasn’t enough to just slap some wood in there and call it a shelf, I wanted to maximize the space available to me.  So I talked to a co-worker (and the guy who got me this job), Colin, on how I should cut the wood to get it angled right (he’s been doing a lot of wood working too, so I knew he’d know) and lo and behold, this is the final product!

Yes, I packed it to the hilt with electronics!  But the best part of all, it Amy made a curtain for it to cover it all up!  So with the TV mounted it now looks like this:

  Yes for whatever reason when this house was made 30 years ago they put the fireplace off to the right instead of centering it.  We decided to center the TV on the wall rather than over the fireplace.  It’s hard to tell, but off to the left, behind the wedding photo is a little white cord cover that is filled to capacity with wires.  All in all, Amy and I are quite pleased with the way it turned out, it really brings our living room up to a much more modern condition and feels… adultish rather than college dormish.

On Shelves and TV Mounts