New TV Riser, originally uploaded by espeedy123.
Is there any more important DIY pursuit than that which improves one’s ability to appreciate TV?
I have not yet invested in a flat screen TV. Here in the bedroom, the TV I bought back in college at a Wal-Mart in Austin is still kickin’. It has traveled the country and seen the inside of more moving trucks than 99% of America’s TVs. I will never forget how my friend Jay, who was helping me load furniture into a U-Haul truck during afternoon rush hour in NYC, dropped it onto the Fifth Ave. sidewalk in front of my building. I was upstairs at the time. Jay felt so guilty and said it even bounced a bit. There’s barely a dent on one corner to show for it. And you would never know any of it happened from the excellent picture.
Anyways, a recent changeup of furniture in the bedroom meant that this TV was sitting about a foot lower than previously. This was a bit of a bummer, and it especially irked Michael who found it much more difficult to see.
I searched for an inexpensive way to lift it up. The solution had to be cheap, otherwise why not just buy a flat screen and retire the old TV to a lucky person on Craigslist.
At first I got excited about this blogger’s plywood and PVC monitor riser solution. I priced out materials at Home Depot and it looked like this was going to cost me $25 and quite a bit of time.
Then, I found an easier and more elegant solution: the LINDEN table from IKEA, chopped off at the legs to perfectly accommodate the TiVo and cable box. It comes in birch or black. It has a slight Asian aesthetic to it. And at $29.99, the price is right. I used a hacksaw to chop off the legs and glued some thin cork on the leg bottoms.
I spray painted the table bottom black as it came unfinished. And I used a black Sharpie to touch up any chipped areas from the hacksaw. I rather like the finished result, I am thinking of submitting to to IKEA hacker:
2 responses so far ↓
Holly // May 10, 2009 at 4:01 am |
You are such an awesome DIYer! I love how the table turned out. Have you blogged about buying shelves? I really need to buy more bookshelves, but I don’t want to spend a fortune. And a lot of stuff on Craigslist is… well… ugly as sin.
Jimmy Cracked-Corn // May 11, 2009 at 2:52 pm |
I just checked out the Ikea Hacking web page and yours looks better than most I saw there. I see from the reflection that your bed was unmade. Tsk, tsk.