TV UNIT BEGUN

Hurricane Ernesto, Storm Lilian – how good of you to drop by. Just in time for the bank holiday weekend. Are you thinking of hanging around long? No. Good. I’d hate for my eagerly awaited extra-long time off work to be rudely interrupted by wind. It’s bad enough having to deal with the ‘whooosh’ from the other half’s emission-producing fart factory without additional gusts from inclement weather.

Anyhow I’ve little time to dwell on the fickle nature of the British summer because there’s a TV unit to be made. Shut the door on your way out.

You’d think that being a smaller, more simplistic looking unit than those previously constructed, this one would be built in a flash but we’ve already hit a number of snags. It’s all so annoying!

Where do we start?

Thanks to that inconvenient sticking out bit of mantlepiece, we’ve realised that the TV unit can’t be made up as one piece then slid back into its final position. It also can’t be rotated in as a complete single piece which means having to come up with a creative construction solution or basically build it in situ. Once in, it can never come out.

Dry building the sides and top shelves to see if it'll fit

Then there’s the hole in the wall. It houses a wall vent presumable fitted by the previous owners because they may have had an old gas or coal fire but it’s exactly where you’d want to position your side panel. Templating round the vent would be a bit of a bitch so instead the unit’s side panel will sit partly on top of the hole and the vent grille will be cut down to sit alongside the wood.

Vent hole in the way

To mirror the library unit, I wanted the side and top panels cut as straight lengths then painted black. There are also a couple of small drawer units to be incorporated on each side like before but the biggest set-back is the lower shelf. I wanted the lowest shelf to be the same width as the Cuba cabinet ie 40 cm instead of 30 cm. But the side panels are not as wide as the shelf. How to get round this?

The only solution we can come up with is to inset the side panels into the wider shelf by cutting out a small section. 

Overcoming the different sized wood

Unfortunately, this wider shelf cannot be screwed to the side panels so is being supported largely by the small drawer units and a couple of vertical supports. I am hoping this will be enough to prevent warping but worst-case scenario, an additional central support piece can be added.

Side drawer units supporting the large lower shelf

All of these things have added a unique set of challenges to what I thought would be a very straightforward TV unit project so much so that my head hurts just thinking about it. Get that kettle on again. More tea is needed to lubricate these little grey cells!

Pulling it all together