Armoire, How I Love Thee

A few days ago, I built an entertainment center. John and I have never had one, so this was a very cool thing to us.

In Austin, there was a hole built into the wall that the mammoth of a TV we owned then sat in. We sold that giant when we moved to TN, and used our old bedroom TV as our new living room tv.

That’s right. No more bedroom TV. This was actually a purposeful turn of events. We decided that TV is really not a bedroom event. There are other things to be done in the bedroom, sleep being one of them, but definitely not the only thing. No bedroom in our home will ever have a TV in it again. (Have I mentioned before how TV is the devil?)

So, anyway, the tv we’ve been using sits on a small, ancient (my mom bought it used, at a yard sale, when I was a kid) end table-type stand. All the electronic equipment (dvd player, receiver, vhs player, xbox) has always just been underneath the table… but this is NOT childproof!

So, in order to protect our son, and our electronic equipment, we’ve had to have other things blocking the front of the TV area to keep Braden away since he’s been mobile… some things haven’t even been hooked up since we moved to the house… and, in general it was just, well… totally ghetto-fied. So we invested some moolah into buying our first, real, badass EC.

Our EC is made of real Brazilian Pine (so I can think of Evelynn while I gaze upon it) in a honey stain. It was way cheaper than most of the ones I found ‘out there,’ but matches our other living room furniture wonderfully, and had all the features we wanted.

Its professional name is “Armoire,” my friends. The cabinet doors fold back all the way for our viewing pleasure, and then they close completely when it’s time for the TV to go “bye-bye.” (This is what we tell Braden after a viewing session of, say, Baby Einstein or “It’s a Big, Big World.” We turn it off, wave at it, and say, “Bye-bye, TV!”)

And, by the way, I rock at putting things together. I love building projects. Home-improvement projects, and the like, are my thing. My dad definitely passed on the “handy-man gene” to his middle child.

Check it out:

Tools/Supplies:

Toos/Supplies src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1159/1454273640_f98e224473_m.jpg” mce_src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1159/1454273640_f98e224473_m.jpg” width=240>

Showing off the building materials.

Preparing to build, and happy about wielding a hammer!

Screwing and handling knobs.

It’s taking shape!

WIP src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1401/1453407839_d9aad4f078_m.jpg” mce_src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1401/1453407839_d9aad4f078_m.jpg” width=240>

Ahhh… gaze upon its “almost done” beauty!

Celebrating how much I Rock.

John decides to help me finish up by hammering the back piece onto the unit.

Notice the naked baby leg behind him. Heh.

Braden helps John hammer on the back piece. We couldn’t have done it without him!

And now we have the TV and equipment inside, set up in rudimentary fashion. When John returns from this weekend’s “Time to Make the Doughnuts” road trip, he’ll set to the task of setting everything up right, complete with running speaker cables and mounting our surround sound speakers.

And then we’re gonna rent some badass porn.

Okay, so, maybe not.

Isn’t our new armoire lovely?

*sigh*