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!