Mounted TV and Corner Floating Shelf

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:

Frosting a Window

Mmm… frosting.

Cake dreams aside, honest question: why would anyone install a standard clear exterior window on main-level bathroom? Unless you TOTALLY trust your window treatment, this is just asking for peeping toms.

Our basement bath had this particular problem and I wanted a simple fix. I’m also not very adept with contact paper, so I didn’t want a cut to measure option that I would most assuredly mess up. One more note – this window may not be permanent to the home, as its 30+ years old and does have some water damage/past leaking issues. So, our options had to be: nothing too expensive and can be tossed if we ever save up the cash to replace it with an updated window.

All home renovation bloggers love the spray-paint isle, and I for one must practice restraint when I allow myself to go looking at the colorful cans. That being said, it is in this aisle that inspiration struck when I found Rust-Oleum makes a product that is specifically to create your own frosted glass! Perfect!

So, before we even painted the trim around the window, I went in and put on 2-3 light layers of the frosted spray. THAT’S ALL! I was sure to spray the glass with the window open, as it helped ventilate the room and limited the over spray on the trim. When the window was fully dry we were still able to tape the frosted glass and paint the trim in ultra pure white without damaging the new frosting.

Its exactly what we needed, it lets in light and the only thing you can see from the outside is the light in the room turning on and off (you can’t even perceive figures moving around in the room).

So, the moral of the story is, just let your partner peruse the spray paint aisle once in a while – they might just find a cheap solution to a pesky problem.