Bye Bye Boring: DIY Fireplace Entertainment Center

On very lucky days, I'll get an email from a blogger that totally blows me away and I just can't wait to share it with you.  That's exactly what happened when Katja from ShiftCtrlArt dropped me a line.  Looking at the before and after, its hard to believe its the same room!  Obviously this couple is more than just a little handy as evidenced by all of the beautiful work they have done to their home but one project I thought was super cool (and very DIY friendly) was their build out of a DIY fireplace entertainment center.  So please say hi to Katja who will tell you all about it.

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I was so excited when Stefanie agreed to letting me tell you about our DIY "fireplace".
I say "fireplace" because it's a faux fireplace. I also lovingly refer to it as our "Oil lamp +".



This is what our living room looked like when we bought our house.

We immediately had big plans for it such as adding big windows to the back yard (on the right there), add some built-ins, move the stair case, put in a new kitchen, just to name a few things.



Here we are several weeks into our remodel. The big windows have been put in as you can see on the right. That is dh (darling husband) framing in one of the two smaller windows to make room for the new fireplace.

To build the entertainment center, we first put in some inexpensive IKEA cabinets all the way across the back wall.

We installed fans in the cabinets to avoid overheating. They are completely silent and do a great job.

We also installed a remote control repeater between the TV components and the TV so that we can switch channels with the cabinet doors closed.



Then we built a little bumped out wall using metal studs. Then we added drywall to the whole thing. Hey, there I am ...

Because the entertainment center is so long, 15 1/2 feet, and we did not want seams in our counter top, we came up with this idea: We used solid oak flooring, which we laid on top of the plywood as a table top. Sort of like a DIY butcher block counter.



Then the fireplace was tiled. We had calculated the size of the fireplace until we were blue in the face to have all the glass tile line up with no cuts. I bought 1x2 glass tiles for the fireplace as well as a single sheet of the same kind in 1x1 tiles to fill in all the half spaces at the end of each row. I really like how that turned out but it was a nail biter until the finish line, to see if we had calculated correctly.




The mantle is built out of some 1x2 and 1x3 oak, then stained with the same stain as the table top.

By the way, our remodel was permitted and inspected by the city. Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any results you get by following these ideas. Please do your own research. I recommend using flame-less LED candles as a great alternative to an ethanol fire insert.

Here is the space again before and after:




Thank you so much Stefanie, for letting me guest post.

You can find out more about our remodel and all our other DIY projects over at shiftctrlart.com.

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Do you have your own Bye Bye to Boring story to share?  Please drop me an email - I'd love to feature you in a future post.