DIY-Win; Our Rustic-Industrial MASSIVE Entertainment center.

Not everything on the blog is going to be as deep and dark as my previous post was. So I figured for this week we would switch things up and feature a fun DIY home project.

When Shaine and I moved into our current home we could not wait to move in and put our own personal touches on the home. Reason number one was because it was new and exciting but also in our previous house, we knew it was not our “forever home” or even our “family home” so we did things we knew potential buyers would like, rather than things we loved. In this house, this is MY family home, as for Shaine, he still needs a bit more convincing. — He think’s he needs more land. Which newsflash there, Sweetheart we do not need more land. Our 1.5-acre lot is perfect for this “city girl.” — Anyways, the point is this current house is not something we are looking to “flip”. I want to live here for at least 5, 10 maybe even 15 years which means I get to do whatever I want when it comes to decor. I like to describe my style as rustic-industrial chic. I love wood, piping, steel, dark colors mixed with soft homey light colored accents. When we were in the moving process we knew there was going to be some furniture we would need to replace. Our cheap but efficient IKEA furniture could not handle one more move. In IKEA’s defense, that furniture had moved six different times in eight years. And one of those moves was trans-continental and if you know anything about military moves, you would definitely understand the beating those belong take. One of the biggest things we would need to replace was our entertainment center. It was just a flimsy old piece, nothing special, which made it that much more fun to brainstorm ideas of things we could create. (Create, haha, get it, like the category of this blog!… I may be the only one who finds this funny, if that is the case, so be it, we will move on now.)

One of my fondest memories I have from living in Germany was the massive entertainment centers they were known for. These pieces would take up multiple different walls and bring so much storage and character to a room. I loved them but knew they were too massive to move as many times as we would. Now that we were not moving anymore I knew I wanted something big, something that created storage and a place to display all of our travel keepsakes. Going from there I went to Pinterest like any other new homeowner and started looking. I found a few things that I liked but nothing I loved.

Until I found this:

I loved it, it was everything I wanted but obviously, there was no place for the TV. I showed it to my live-in, super cute, handy-man and asked his opinion. Like any good husband, he said he loved it and that he thinks he could make it. However, this is where his creative brain started working. Instead of doing a stain on each piece of wood he came up with the idea of burning the boards instead. This technique is super similar to the Japanese tradition of Shou-Sugi-Ban. Shou-Sugi-Ban is a technique of burning the boards to preserve the wood. We planned to use these boards on the inside of our home but we could use them outside if we choose. This technique actually protects the wood from rot and makes it fire resistant, which makes it a great choice for outdoor decorating. The difference between our boards and the boards you typically see was the different level of charcoal we choose to do. We opted for a much lighter burning. Enough to give the wood character but not too much to make the grain disappear. In the beginning, I was super hesitant. I wasn’t sure how an entire wall in our home would look with burnt wood plastered all over it. Would he be able to evenly burn each piece of wood? Would my insane level of OCD be able to stare at this wall without picking it apart? I am super happy to report back that he did just that. Made it a perfect compromise of character, color, and texture, all under my watchful eye of course, quite literally. I stood as close as I could without the risk of catching on fire myself.

OK so… Now you understand our idea, let me show you the process.

*Brief side note, we made this almost a year ago now before the idea of starting a blog every crossed my mind, so some of the pictures are a bit comical and the quantity of material used is my best guess. If I had to guess the cost I would say somewhere around $500 for everything. And about one weekend’s worth of work.

Materials used:

8 – 14″ 1×12 Pine boards.

6 – 3″ piping

4 – 4″ piping

30 – 12′ piping

6 – 6′ piping

Check out the piping here! Use that link to see what piping we used. Of course, you can choose any brand, this just happens to be the one we used.

All of the fittings and flanges we needed. This is where it got expensive. You don’t realize how many tiny pieces you need to put this gigantic puzzle together.

And lastly, we used Rust-Oleum Black Hammer spray paint, to help make all of the pieces look clean and uniform. This step was a huge pain in the butt, but it made a huge difference. Link to: Black Hammered Spray-paint

Now moving on to the fun part, the pictures:

Before, days after moving in

Prep work. Here you can see Shaine using a propane tank and torch. Every time he would go over the wood is what would make it look darker. The knots and grain would never burn just the solid wood around them. In the lower left corner of the picture, you can see a few piece of piping drying in the sun after we spray-painted them.

Next came assembly.

Even though you can only see five of what we refer to as the legs, this step took a lot longer than you would think. Before we even started we took a pencil and drew out exactly what we wanted. We had to make sure we hit a stud each time since we were going to build off of this framework. This meant I wasn’t able to really choose the length of each shelf, this was chosen for me. Looking down at the picture, if you look really closely you can see we only put two screws in the flanges; one on top and one on the bottom. Those were the two points that hit directly on the stud.

Placing each of the boards was easier than I expected. Thankfully the width of the board was the perfect width to fit right in-between the T and the flange. The fit was perfect but to make it a bit more secure we used a pipe clamp on each end, just in case.

After we placed the first level we wanted to get the boards that were going to be mounted behind the TV.

We centered the board on what would be the center part of the middle opening. Like I said before all of this went back to when we drew out exactly where we wanted everything. That step is very important and really prevents a lot of fights between DIY-partners. 😉

Following the line all the way up to be sure we hit the center of the stud.

Slowly but surely more and more boards went up. At this point in the project, we could not decide how many boards we wanted behind the TV. As you can see right now we have 6, but we felt like we needed more of the shelves to be done before we could determine the exact spacing.

You could say I am a visual learner… haha

Now that more of the shelves were up this was the turning point to determine exactly how many boards should go behind the TV. Shaine and Jared (man in the neon shirt, also know as Shaine’s brother) thought 7 was the perfect number. It would allow the TV to be centered and leave some grey between the accent piece the TV was on and the wood of the top shelf. Myself on the other the other hand thought it was more important to have 8 panels. That way you could see more of the wood accent wall behind the TV.

And now you can obviously see who won this battle! — Happy wife, happy life. And yes those are my slippers at the bottom of the photo, like I said before, constructed under my watchful eye!

TV accent wall, CHECK. Bottom three shelves, CHECK. 4-foot poles installed for upper shelves, CHECK

This picture doesn’t bring any other technical value OTHER THAN did you know a beer cap can also be substituted as a washer? Like any good DIY project, beer was involved as a source of hydration. — As we were getting ready to mount the TV Shaine and Jared realized they were one washer short. And you best believe they were not going to let the TV sit on the floor all night after their hard work. Insert improvisation here. Coors Light, helping aid in home improvement projects for years to come. 🙂

Teamwork makes the dream work

And just like that, we were finished for the night… After we watched some TV of course.

The next morning we worked on the upper shelves. For these, we followed the same process of fitting the boards into the pipe fittings. The one difference was the T-pieces. On the lower shelves below we bought T-pieces that were the exact same diameter as the piping. On the upper shelves, Shaine had the genius idea to buy T-pieces that were slightly bigger than the piping. This made it easier for us to position the shelves exactly where we wanted them. We didn’t have to worry about the additional height the fittings would bring. Once again this worked perfectly for my OCD, I could say exactly what height I wanted each to be. As you saw from the picture above we put the 4ft pipes in first and then slide the larger T-piece down the piping and positioned them where we wanted them.

Here it the unfurnished project and our super cute Harley. She is the new and improved Vanna White of our house.

And here it is today. I still come home every day and just stare at it. It is perfect. Big, beautiful and full of character. We showcase all of our travel goodies, display holiday decor and have something pretty to look at. I am constantly changing up the nick-nacks that are on it, but that is half the fun. Currently, I am on the hunt for three large bins I can place on the bottoms shelf to store larger items, such as DVDs, Shaine’s video game equipment, magazines, ect..

Oh and at night… it glows! We put in LED light strips behind the TV. Which of course was from Ikea. I am an Ikea lover at heart. I purchased three strips; One on top, one on the left and one on the right.

Here is the link to purchase some of your own: IKEA Led light kit

Hope you all have enjoyed this DIY project. It was so fun to make and even more fun to share. If you have any questions make sure you comment below. Once again, thank you for taking the time to read my blog. <3

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