The Beast

Let me explain this.  When we bought our first home about 11 years ago, we had no furniture.  I think my mom bought us this "put it together yourself" entertainment center.  It came in two boxes each weighing over 200 pounds.  How can particle board and wood laminate be so heavy you ask.  I have no idea, but once the thing was put together, I did the difficult math and figured the beast weighed over 400 pounds.  It has served us well, its not THAT ugly, but when we moved from Utah to Michigan, the thing nearly killed the movers.  Then I swore I wouldn't take it with us to Missouri, but it came just the same.  When we moved into the Missouri house, we hadn't closed on it when our stuff showed up, so the kind builder let us move everything into the garage.  Which meant that this beast had to be moved into our basement by us.  My father-in-law and Corey actually slid it down our snowy side yard and took it in through the back door.  Where I declared that it would not be with us for long.  Six months later it came with us to Texas and here it still sits.  Looking a little worse for wear.

I think a cat who is no longer with us did this damage.

Missing a knob which isn't even the original knob.

So its been a thorn in my side for a while.  To make matters worse, you saw that it now looks like a TV worship center.  Why two TVs right?  We do enjoy watching television, but not that much.  Well the bottom TV stopped working, so we purchased the top TV.  Well I couldn't have a gaping hole where the old TV was, so we just left it there.  (The kids now use it to play Wii and it seems to be working just fine - GRRR!)  It has been the plan to have Corey build a new entertainment center like this;

Isn't it beautiful?  Well it costs over $2000 and of course Corey could build it for "under $500".  Well Corey's to build list is very lengthy.  So I've just been explaining why we have 2 TVs instead.  Over the holidays, we had people over and the day they were coming, I started looking in the IKEA catalog at their entertainment centers.  I had seen this solid wood one that would only cost $500.  Below is a picture of what this cute girl at the lettered cottage did with one.  So cute huh?  I would be happy with it as is, no paint.

Well just looking at the catalog sent Corey searching for and purchasing wood to build his own.  Who knew that's all it would take?  Such a little, subtle threat.  Here's what he's done so far.

Not too bad for a couple of nights work!  He swears its all square too!  So onto the drawers and the glass doors and a few more pieces of trim.  Then I'll have to paint it.  He'll build the book cases later and we can be rid of the beast and our TV worship wall.  Thank you IKEA!