A New Year!

Ahhh, 2015, we made it another year!

2014 held many new adventures for my life. I was able to buy a house, adopted a dog and became engaged to a wonderful man! 2015 is going to have a lot of living up to do in order to beat that, but I have a feeling it will come through for me.

With this new year, one of my resolutions is going to be actively working on my blog. I firmly believe that writing is a wonderful outlet for so many things in life, including boredom.

Not to say that I'm bored by any means (I actually have a problem with saying 'no' to volunteering for things which often gets me into an overworked frenzy) but I do find myself at times sitting in front of the television mindlessly engorging myself in Netflix because I'm...bored?

With that being said, as a resolution to blog more that gives me more crafts and projects to finish in order to work on said blog.

And with all of that being said, here is the latest and greatest project that I finished over my Christmas break (with the help of my uber cute fiancé)!

Introducing my new TV console!

As my older sister has stated several times, I'm not only one of those people who likes to peruse Pinterest and pin lots of DIY projects --- I'm also one of those people who actually does the projects that I pin.

And this one was one of them.

I've had this little nook in my living room since I moved in and had several ideas of what I wanted to place there. I've changed the layout of my living room several times but eventually we hung the flat screen television against this wall.

Thus, my idea of having a nice large console underneath it started to brew.

I saw several inspirational ones that I loved on Pinterest.

And I even went to several stores in search of something similar, but ultimately never found anything that I truly fell in love with and "couldn't live without".

My sister had promised me an old dresser that they no longer used in my nephews room for a while, and finally I decided I could make it fit my needs. We went to pick it up and it was too big for my car.

My sister kept saying, "It's pretty big, where are you going to put this in your house?" and even my fiance commented that it was big and he wasn't sure that it would fit my space.

Oh, ye of little faith!

My brother-in-law graciously offered to drive it over in his large van and loaded it up. We met him at my house and the two guys unloaded. I immediately went to work on transforming it into the console of my dreams. Here is the before picture:

The stickers had to be removed and  from the drawers that I was going to keep. Originally I was going to have only one open shelf with four drawers below, but after realizing how much technology we had to place on the shelf, I decided to have two open shelves and leave two drawers on the bottom.

I removed the three small drawers on the top and the four drawers on the bottom, then sanded down the main frame of the dresser.

Next I removed the pieces of wood from the inside that were the drawer sliders (turns out that's actually what they're called). A couple of them were stuck so I called in the fiancee to help me out.

                                                 
I thought I would try to make the shelf work with the small pieces of wood that came down vertically (forming the drawer edges in the dresser) but then decided I just wanted it to be one long shelf. So off those came!

One they were removed and I could lay down a piece of wood to make a shelf, I measured the inside width and length of the dresser. Then remeasured, and measured some more, making notes the entire time.

Initially I thought that I could use the existing drawers to make my shelves from but the wood inside of them was flimsy and there wasn't enough to fit both shelves.

With my plans in hand I realized that I didn't have enough wood in my stash from my bookshelf project (which I'll post about when I finish it---the goal over this 3-day weekend).

So, being the type-A person that I am, I browsed the Lowes and Home Depot websites for exactly what I wanted.

The dresser was 16" deep on the inside so my goal was to get a piece that was wide enough to where I wouldn't have to trim it down. I debated the idea of getting a piece of plywood and cutting the pieces I needed but couldn't find one in my budget (of nothing) that would accommodate both shelves. 

Lowes, thankfully, has a 1x16 lumber piece that was long enough to fill my entire top shelf and 3/4 of my bottom. I had enough wood at home to fill the missing spot on the second shelf. 

There were several notches at the ends and in the middle of the dresser so those had to be marked out on the pieces of wood.

Once everything was marked, measured, remeasured (just to be sure!) and I was completely satisfied with it, the fiance came in and cut all the pieces for me (he's such a good help!).

We then placed the top piece of wood on the top shelf and it fit so snugly that we had to knock it into place (no need to nail!).

You can see the space we needed to fill

Once both shelves were in, we cut down another smaller piece of wood to fill the last section of the middle shelf, glued them together, and set them in place.

Then came the painting! I love the colors that I'm adding to my house. When I first bought it the kitchen and living room were a horrendously bright blue and the dining room was a green. Thanks to the help of some wonderful coworkers (Hi Kristin, Ashley, & Cappy!) we painted the rooms a lovely gray color in one day.

Because of this I chose a yellow to offset the gray and blue tones that I already had in my living room.

I filled the crack on the second shelf with wood filler (my love for wood filler is now strong) and decided to paint the insides white. When I had the first coat on the console I sanded down the drawers.

When all was said and done, the dresser and drawers were painted to my liking. I shouldn't added a clear topcoat but I was so excited to start using the console that I figured I'd do it at a later time.

The next step was to do some more measuring of the height between the top of the console and the top of the first shelf in order to cut the holes so we could have our cables hang out the back of the console.

I measured and remeasured (but didn't measure again) and had to go back and measure again (because the fiancee cut into the wood shelf) in order to make three perfect squares in the back of the console (which I didn't take pictures of because I was tired by then).

We set everything to our liking, I picked up a couple of baskets from Michael's (during the 50% off sale) and we set it into place!

Total Cost: >$30

I'm so happy with the outcome of it and am already planning my next great DIY project. I'm thinking a cat/dog food station (which I've already got partially started).

Leave a comment and let me know what you think!