family room progress

Remember how I gushy I got about Ikea's shoe cabinet, here? How I loved it so much I bought two? That's because with my problematic family room, posted here, it not only needed to function as a mudroom, but also as our media/entertainment center console.

I got the idea here.

I was pretty sure this would do the trick. Except instead of a mirror, we mounted our flat screen.

Initially, I didn't notice the gap in between the two units from my above inspiration image, but once we assembled ours, that gap really bothered me.

So, we just preformed our first Ikea Hack (pretty minor, I know). We took the tops off, drilled new holes so that that each was offer center to both to the left and the right. This way each individual piece could butt right up to each other instead of creating that narrow gap.

And our entertainment center was born.

Sorta of.

Until we mounted our TV and realized how high it was on the wall. Too high. Like sitting in the front row of the movie theatre high. No good.

So, we trimmed the legs. Since we bought the tall ones, and our ceiling is quite low, we trimmed the legs quite a bit. This allowed us to mount the TV at a much more comfortable and normal height.

You can see in this Ikea image that the legs are longer.

You can see from the above photo:

• that we trimmed the legs almost all the way off
• how we scooted the tops over so that two pieces can sit flush next to each other
• my cool flooring situation, posted here.
• my partially painted ceiling
• the new crown moulding
• the lack of a baseboard
• my fun green CB vase, posted here

And remember this what the room looked like when we moved in. 

It's slowly coming together, baby step by baby step. (More on the transformation coming later!)

If you are into Ikea hacks, check out this site.

Do you have any Ikea hacks?

Linked up to Domestically Speaking | iheartorganizing