Our project reveal!!!!

Our family room had a large empty wall on one side that I didn't know what I was going to do with.  When my sister was here over Christmas break we came up with the idea of putting cabinets and bookshelves across the whole wall.  It would be a great way to add much needed storage to our house.  I'll have to post the drawings that she did in another post.  They are quite impressive.  So we were going to order cabinets from my brother and have him install them.  Then we got to thinking and we have a lot of other projects to do around here so we went on a date to Ikea one night in hopes of finding another solution.  Well, we found an awesome entertainment system.  We used their computer to design what we wanted and then printed off our list of materials to get.  It was quite the haul!  We thought we were going to be able to put this together ourselves, but after the bottom cabinets sat there for a couple weeks, we knew it required skills that neither of us have.  So we hired my brother to install them.  And the results are amazing and way better than we could have ever done.  My brother really does have some SERIOUS skills!

First, I painted the wall.  I had Home Depot do a color match in Glidden paint for Benjamin Moore's Rockport Gray.  It took some convincing to get Keith to let me do this color.  He was comfortable with the color scheme of our old house and wasn't too excited to try something new.  But I on the other hand have been ready to do something totally different for a long time.  So I pulled up some pictures online and showed him that gray walls don't necessarily look dull, dark, and depressing.  I think if the right color of gray is chosen it can brighten up the other aspects of the room, especially white trim:  

YoungHouseLove

FavoritePaintColorsBlog

Now the cabinet part.

Here's my brother running wires for the TV and computer and stuff.  Here you can also see the base he built to raise the cabinets a few inches so the doors wouldn't drag on the carpet and it would look nicer:

Getting the cabinets up.  It became evident that Ikea doesn't make things perfectly square and that they don't have the best instructions.  It took reinventing the way to hang the cabinets so they wouldn't fall off the wall after a week like they would if we used the screws that came with them.

On the far left we put in a desk for our computer.  And then of course a spot for the TV.

Doors and hardware are up.  My brother added the crown molding and the base molding at the bottom to cover the base he built to raise the cabinets up:

View when entering family room:

Pretty much finished!  We just need to add lights and glass shelves to the upper cabinets and my bro is coming back to put trim on the parts that meet the wall:

We are beyond pleased with the results!  We love that all the electronic wires are hidden and that we have room for games, crafting supplies, and office stuff.  Now for the rest of the room...like decorating and replacing that awesome ceiling fan!