Finished product firstWe recently redid our entire downstairs. When we bought the house, it was a nice place and technically turnkey (famous last words). Well, we found out we were pregnant and did not want to have our little one crawling around on some old, nasty looking high traffic carpet. So we decided to replace the carpet. Since that was happening, we decided to paint all of the walls. With walls, you should do the trim, too. Hell - let's just do the ceiling then to cap everything off. Once it was said and done, it was great. 3 rooms, a wet bar and TV room were all set. I then decided to make the bar my own and used ship-lap and gas pipes to give it a certain look (reference second picture).This is what the bar looked like when we bought the house. Who paints a wall black?This was the redo and inspiration to the TV wall.I loved it so much, that I decided to do the same for the TV area. The TV used to sit on a stand, as did all of the speakers. It was nice, but wasn't tidy and 'clean.' Out came google sheets to maximize the wood usage and randomize the look. After that - it was assembling and installing. The great thing about this, is that I spent only about 250 bucks on materials (roughly). With a chop saw, battery powered finishing nailer and a level - it made this a pretty simple project.Here is the base wall after we repainted. It was a darker brown accent wall - where the rest of the walls are a neutral tan color. I measured out the spacing and used painters tape to mark where everything would goSimple 1x2 to make a backing to attach the ship-lap to. I ran all of the wires to keep it nice and neat (also - so I did not have to poke holes in the wall).I made a simple design in Google Sheets to 'randomize' the look and went to town.This is what the google sheet looked like for the design of bar - and I did something similar for this wall. Each cell was 6 inches and each board 8 feet - so I knew exactly how many boards to buy - and this let me randomize the color to my liking.Progress - mounted the TV and kept working up.Slow and steady - almost there (this is actually 4 pm as winter is dark in Alaska). I did the same type of shelving and gas support as in the bar. The shelves eventually got stained and all wiring comes out of once nice hole.Progress with some finishing touches.Finished and ready to enjoyThe view from the couch, this may have been a 4 finger deep pour - hence the blur...17 year old cat tax approval.I did finish out the room with blackout blinds and a shelf over the sub to hold onto the receiver and apple tv.http://bit.ly/2FBqt3q Imgur link since I suck at these cross posting things!! via /r/DIY http://bit.ly/2DdzM7X
