Sometimes everything can’t be perfect and HGTV-ey. Sometimes you’ll spend half a day working on something and it simply won’t work…or won’t look right. Sometimes you spend $35 on a 4×8 sheet of MDF to build cabinets that in your head are going to be perfect for the room, yet after piecing it all together and bringing it in the house, it looks like a pile of Huey-dog-doo.
My house, which is 13 1/2′ wide, a bit wider then most rowhomes, did not like my hard work this past weekend. I slaved over this built-in for most of the afternoon Saturday. Beth was in Seattle for work until that evening so I had a a full day of projects ahead of me. I had a successful morning installing the fluted trim around both the front window and the kitchen windows (pictures to come, the lighting was terrible that day). Being satisfied with myself I set to work on the built-in. I double checked the dimensions and started ripping the pieces down. I assembled everything and decided I would let the adhesive setup before bringing the unit into the house. I was excited and stopped for the day around 4:30 with this:
I was pretty proud at my first attempt at cabinet building. Remember this didn’t need a back because of the kneewall and I was going to add shelves after it was installed, so I thought I was good to go. Several hours later and a few too many beverages down the street, it was Sunday morning. Hoping to atleast accomplish something productive, I brought the cabinet in the house and set it on the base I had built. It looked terrible. Not “Matt did you build this out of popsickle sticks terrible”, but “wow that looks out of place terrible.”
I was crushed. I sat and stared at it for at least an hour, trying to rationalize how I could make it work. There was no way. It just made the room look WAY too narrow looking towards the living room from the kitchen. It honestly didn’t look terrible being viewed from the couch, but it certainly was out of place. I sulked around for a while and in my hungover state decided to go with plan B.
Plan B – relocate all AV equipment to just under the living room floor. The amp was already there. I already had one of those IR repeater kits so that the comcast box could be changed from anywhere in the room. The hardest part about this is that I had to pull all the speaker wires and video feeds back into the basement and re-route them. I also need a new surround receiver that does on screen display. Its only money right?
Plan B also includes continuing my custom wainscoting on the kneewall in place of the built-in and along the front wall of the house. I started with what little material I had left from the previous wainscoting project and picked up the rest of what I need yesterday.
Here is all of my hardwork undone. All of the wires pulled back down into the basement except the coax for the cable. I am now left with the fun task of piecing some baseboards back together.
Yes there is some drywall patch to do where the wirepull box was installed. Good news is I may be able to get away with doing no spackle work. We’ll see though. I am going to mirror the same size wainscoting as I did in the entryway. 3″ vertical strips and 2″ horizontal. I guess you could call this poor man’s wainscoting, but I think it is going to create a nice perspective of separation for the living area. There’s some filling and caulking to do, but I think it’ll look pretty good when its done.
I’ve got the material I need to finish the front wall tonight, so maybe I’ll have a good update tomorrow.
Moral of the story, just because it looks good in your head, it may not look good in real life.
Stay tuned.
