Ikea Expedit media center and how I hide the cable modem

I have more of my living room make over to show today.
It's our media center.


I repurposed an Ikea Expedit book shelf.




We had an IKEA Expedit (now called Kallax) cube book shelf
that wasn't being used so I decided to repurpose it into a media center for our living room.


I added 2 2x4's to the bottom to bring it up off of the ground. 


I screwed them right into the bottom of the shelf with screws.


Next I wrapped the entire bottom of the shelf with a 1 x 4 to cover the 2x4's.  
I mitered the corners.


I really wanted to add 1x3 molding around the top as well, 
but then the top piece (which is a 1 x 12 repurposed from another project) 
would have been too narrow.  


Our shelves needed to hold our electronics.  
I hid them, or worked with them as best as I could.


We have this unsightly cable modem that is very necessary
 but not aesthetically pleasing at all.
(that gray battery thing as gone away since this photo was taken)


I built this fake-book-front modem hider.
I cut the spines off of some books and glued them to a scrap of wood.  


You can still see the modem if you look hard, 
but it's disguised pretty well.


I built a small shelf with legs so the cable box and DVD player 
would both have a place to go.
To hide all of the cords, I used 3m cord clips (amazon affiliate link)  
to hold the plethora that is behind the media center.  
The cord clips are awesome!
You can still see the cords a bit, but it would be way worse if it weren't for the clips.



I would love to put some farmhouse sliding doors on the front.  Someday.
Or maybe someday I'll just build an entire new media center.  
That is really what I would like to do!


I used metal bins from Walmart to corral various small things, 
like photo albums, on the shelf.  
They fit perfectly and I love the way they look.


I filled the other shelves with our family scrapbooks and vintage items 
like my lock box collection and one of my beloved milk boxes.
They cleverly disguise some of the cord mess too.  


And there is my media center in all of it's imperfect goodness!