on the hunt for a wall unit

the first major piece of furniture we set out to buy was an entertainment center. there are simple TV stands, media stands with shelves & drawers, and then there are wall units. because of the configuration of the room, we knew we needed to get a large unit to span the whole wall and provide lots of storage.

ew! but first, for fun-- pic of our old TV stand from target, which i sold on craigslist to a 70 year old woman, who later emailed me and said it wasn't real wood and she was going to try to sell it on ebay for a penny.


so anyway, off we went to macy's furniture store on a former co-worker's recommendation, who had found the perfect accent chair accidentally marked $200 when it was supposed to be $2,000. L-O-L! i was hoping for that same kind of luck. 

love at first sight. a wood unit with white lacquer finish called "the galaxy." the sales guy said the manufacturer only makes custom pieces, except the ones displayed at macy's, so basically i could either get an awesome customized wall unit or the floor model at an awesome price. #winning!!!

with the delivery date set, i assigned my husband mike the painting duties. gray accent walls are so hot right now. 

my parents happened to tag along with us at home depot. i think they were shocked how quickly i wanted to move things along, considering my zero experience in home projects. we had the paint color mixed and bought the frog tape plus the rest of the supplies.

i did the taping at least! check out that awesome job around the outlets.

gray wall dunzo. props to my dad's leveler circa 1978 for creating that really straight line.

so the unit had to be disassembled in the store, then delivered to me and reassembled by a couple of nice folks. macy's had to hire the men from the manufacturer directly because their regular delivery guys weren't authorized to set up the custom pieces. who knew? no idea how we'll ever move this thing out but i'll worry about that later. 

it didn't come with a wall mount unfortunately. mike was shocked that the rotating ones at best buy were anywhere from $200 - $300. but amazon came through with this "articulating" tv wall mount for $60. (since when does "articulating" mean "rotating"?) took us well over an hour to install it.

well worth it though!

the finished product! with some storm troopers on the tube to boot!

gratuitous shot of darth vader-- err, i meant in this photo we can see the TV has been rotated to the right.

so at this moment obi wan just said, "may the force be with you." it reassured me that the force was strong on this project. i will stop with the star wars references after this one.

open up one of the side doors and you've got storage for days! i hated having random things exposed, including dvd's. i guess you could say i'm anti-shelves.

final shot of all my stuffed animals living harmoniously in the upper right cubbie. don't they look happy to have finally found a home together? and i'm so happy that they don't make my living room look like my 7th grade bedroom anymore!