Making a Call of Duty Player Shelf

Remember that giant brick wall in the middle of the house? 

 

We decided it was the prime spot to put the TV. Jaydee got a masonry bit for his drill and went to work. A few minutes later we were set for prime viewing of the new season of Walking Dead. The only problem was where to put all those TV gadgets like the prized Call of Duty player, the DVR and the Apple TV? Since the TV is right over the fireplace, there weren't many options for storage or cable hiding. 

We sat back and considered the situation. Ah ha! We realized what we needed was a crappy shelf that we could cut up to fit over the little brick ledge. We started looking around at our left-over-from-college Ikea shelves for candidates to take to the blade. Unfortunately, most of our left over furniture was a couple notches past too rickety for modification. Soooo Jaydee rolled up his sleeves and built one himself. 

Best part about a custom-made shelf?  It's custom. After construction, we slid the shelf into place and in perfect harmony declared "Liiiiiike a glove!"

Jaydee started with two 6' pieces of oak and three 48" pieces of pine. After a good many cuts, glues and screws, we were in business. Next step was aesthetics. We stained then used veneer strips for the edges. The veneer strips were awesome. You just slap em on there, iron, run a rolling pin along the strip and presto! They're made with real wood so they take stain just like the rest of the shelf.

We learned some valuable lessons about staining during this project. We started out using brushes... mistake. We couldn't figure out why the stain looked all drippy and bubbly. A couple nights later we were watching Rehab Addict on DIY Network and watched that adorable little blonde lady refinish an old fireplace and lo and behold she rubbed the stain on with rag not a brush. Whomp whomp whomp.... Mystery solved. We did a bit of sanding and gave it another shot. MUCH BETTER.

Moral of the story? Read directions.

After we had the shelf all stained and assembled, Jaydee took a circle saw to it and made perfect little holes all along the back and between each shelf to tidy up the 33,243 cables that connect to the TV. The last step will be to figure out what do with the cables in between the shelf and the TV... more on that later.