An Entertainment Center Two Years in the Making

So when we first moved into our Bainbridge Island home, I set out to turn our bonus room into a media room.  I had a grand vision of a built-in entertainment center, in-ceiling speakers, and of course, a large TV.  Being a man, I naturally started with the TV, and we ended up with the bachelor pad setup you see below from a photo back in early 2013:

Realizing this wouldn't last with Jenny, I used Excel (substituting pixel sizes of cells for actual measurements of the bonus room) to come up with this plan that I would use as a starting point for discussion with contractors:

Of course, now all that was left was to present this to a few contractors for bids, and let one of them make my dream come true.  Then  a contractor who is a family member gave the project a ballpark estimate of $10k.  So much for hiring someone to do it.  So, who has two thumbs, and is about to learn a lot about building stuff?  This guy!

I started by installing some nifty outlets in the wall for speaker wires to be routed up into the attic then down into the ceiling.  I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the process, but here's the final product:

Next step was to cut back the carpet and install some pretty basic kitchen cabinets I ordered from Home Depot (in-ceiling speakers can be seen a little here too):

Those cabinets were then topped off with a couple big pieces of MDF, and I installed some new molding in front where I re-tucked the carpet...in case you're curious about the violence I put my knees through to get the carpet tucked in properly, look up "carpet kicking" on YouTube.

Next was to create shelving from MDF I had cut to spec at Home Depot, with some finishing cuts made by yours truly, and backed up by bead board for a nice finishing touch.

Then we had to add trim and caulk everywhere to give it a finished and "built-in" look:

And finally came a new paint job in the room, combined with crown molding up top:

All told, I estimate the project cost me:

• About $2,000 in supplies and new tools I needed to buy
• Two years of weekends, weeknights, and finally a free vacation afforded by me changing employers
• A couple unintended holes in walls
• Numerous hammer-to-thumb contacts
• Many sore backs
• Multiple hand callouses
• Much bloodshed (mostly from either accidentally stepping on or grasping the business end of carpet tacking strips)
• Several pounds of inhaled sawdust
• Several rug burns
• Many headaches that started with, "Wait a second, it's not supposed to look like that..."
• Countless reviews of the age-old lesson, "Measure twice, cut once"

I thought about writing a post to detail every step along the way (and there were many details I skipped here), but that would take waaayyyy too long, and in hindsight, is probably something I should have done throughout the project instead of just at the end.  But if anyone is interested in how it all came to be, feel free to drop me a line, and hopefully you can learn from my mistakes!

Disneyland and Arizona March 2015

Kai has been pretty anti-social lately so we were nervous about our trip to Disney but it was still wonderful. We weren't planning on character meetings because of his social anxiety but when he saw Winnie the Pooh from afar he about leapt out of his skin and it was the highlight of our stay. This trip we spent a lot of our time in the toy stores especially admiring our beloved Buzz, chasing bubbles and splashing in puddles. Fun memories.

Then we went to Arizona to visit my niece and her family (Morgan's sister). We love them so much and Arizona is such a fun and warm place to visit.