Staycation Day 1

After we got back from our long weekend visiting friends and family, did I take a nap? Did I even bother to make myself breakfast? No. Well, I made myself coffee and grabbed a yogurt.

Then I tackled this:

No, we never had a fireplace, real or otherwise, in the living room. We had a giant TV. I will spare you the sight of said giant TV. It came with the house, I think the previous owners were too intimidated by not only the thought of trying to get the giant TV out, but also what the heck to do with the built in surround. And the triangle of blue carpet that was not replaced with the brown carpet the last time they redid the floors. Yes, they carpeted around the giant TV.

When the giant TV broke I thought hubby was going to start crying. Video games on a 60+ inch screen are that much more awesome, I will admit. We've been using our 29 inch "spare" TV (which used to be our main one). To give you an idea of scale, the TV in the photos is sitting on a 20 gallon tote bin. Even more perspective - I'm 5'1" and I barely had to duck to walk inside the giant TV hole.

First things first: remove the mantle. It was only held on by an L bracket and two screws. That's pretty unusual for the homeowner that built all the stuff in the house, he generally built like there will be a herd of elephants tap dancing on everything.

mantle-free

That was the easy part. Then I had to determine how it was put together so I could disassemble. It was hard to determine the best method....

Then I got out the hammer and started waling on it. What I wanted to do was start with the upper compartment where the DVD and game consoles lived. But that was too hard and required using the drill instead of hitting it with a hammer. The bottom part showed much more favorable results with the hammering. And I found two outlets that had been covered up by the built in. Not unsafely covered up, just rendered useless since they were hidden behind the giant TV.

A little more than one hour into the demo and I had the above. It looks so easy in photos.

On to the upper compartment...

Easy peasy, right? (um, yeah, not so much...) This is when I started running into the 3" screws. <le sigh> And, rather than taking down the crown molding he covered it up - after cutting out a 1" piece so he could make the built in flush to the wall. And he damaged the molding in the process. So, I had to toss it.

About two hours total, and I ended up with this:

Nice, right? The table has a shelf that all of the consoles sit on, neatly covered by the old sheet tablecloth. And the room has opened up so much! Even though the table takes up about as much floor space, it leaves the upper half of the wall open and is so much less imposing visually.

And, is it just me, or do the ceilings look taller?

Directly after this project I decided to vacuum the carped stairs with the hand brush since I had the vacuum out anyhow. Glutton for punishment, I am.