What do we do?

The kitchen in our house does not have a built-in microwave above the stove or mounted under cabinets like many modern kitchens. Instead, we are left sacrificing some of our precious counter space with a huge appliance.

For a time, the microwave sat on a microwave cart in the adjacent dining room, but we ditched the cart when we built our banquette.

Once again, thankful we take so many pictures of Winnie, because we always end up finding a “before” photo of stuff!

We have considered replacing the decorative stove vent/light with an overhead microwave, but we like how “open” it makes that part of the kitchen feel.

We also thought about making a hole in this wall for a pocket shelf that would hold the microwave, but the front entry bench is on the other side of the wall.

One other option we are considering is removing the cabinet to the immediate left of the refrigerator, and replacing it with open-air shelves, then mounting a microwave beneath the shelves.

Any feedback or recommendations?

Ever since flat-screen televisions became a hit during my college days (2003-2007), I have always wanted to mount one of them in my living room.  I think that dream grew even more the longer we spent living in rental units (no holes allowed).  We waited a couple of years to tackle this project in our home, just because we wanted to be certain we liked having our TV in that spot before making it permanent.

One of the only “before” pictures I could find of the old corner TV stand. Thankful I take so many pictures of Winnie!

The wall mount I chose came from Home Depot.  I can’t remember the exact specifications, but I know it was easily capable of handling our 50″ LED screen.  Installation was fairly simple.  I just needed to find the wall stud then put two lag bolts into the wall.

The floating shelf design is something I just came up with from materials I had sitting around from the banquette project.  I used a couple of pieces of 2×6 for the wall bracket and two pieces of 3/4″ plywood for the shelves.  I wanted the front of the shelves to match the angle of the TV, so took some careful measurements before cutting.  Each shelf is simply screwed to the 2×6 using 3 wood construction screws.  Very simple design, yet surprisingly sturdy.

The one problem with using plywood: the edges aren’t very pretty and don’t get much better with paint.  My solution was to buy some small pieces of trim wood that were 3/4″ wide.  See photo below:

One final requirement of my “wall-mounted TV with floating shelves” dream was to hide the cables between the TV and the cable box/game system.  I did this by cutting holes in the wall and installing fancy wall plates for cables.

Look!  No Cables!

The finished product: