First of all, I wanted to alert you to a little fun iloverehabs update.  I love rehabs was nominated for a Homie - Apartment Therapy’s blog contest.  There are all different categories and I Love Rehabs is in the list for DIY blog.  I spent some time during my lunch break (cause bloggin isn’t my full-time thing) and check out some of the other blogs.  Yowza!  There are so many great blogs out there!  I have no chance of winning and am not going to even think my blog is good enough but it could be good exposure.  So, if you want to vote,  click on the link below and vote for I love rehabs….or one of your other favorite blogs because I am sure they would love the love:)  You do have to register, which is not hard.  If anything, head on over and check out some seriously sweet blogs.  The contest ends on March 2nd.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/best-diy-blog-nominations-the-homies-2012-166618 

Onto the post for today.  Have you ever wondered what the builders were thinking when they built your house?  Don’t you wish that you could reverse time and go back to when they were building your home and say “Don’t put that outlet there…you should put it here?”  Maybe you would want to tell them to center the fan over the table just in case someone wants to change it out for a pendent light. Or maybe you would tell them it might not be a good idea to put a french door for the door that goes into the garage.  Yes, all those things are things I wish I could have suggested to the builder of my house.  Check out the fan in my kitchen, and the view from the french door that once was in my kitchen.

Today, I want to show you how I overcame the outlet issue.  This builder’s choice in this instance really isn’t that bad.  How were they to know where I wanted to put my flat screen t.v?  The outlet placement didn’t really work with my new, open-backed, bookshelves in my living room.  I do wish the outlet was behind the t.v so I could place our electronics on the top shelf and hide all the wires behind the t.v.  Instead I had to deal with this:

Yuck.  Our cable cord comes up through the wall/floor here:

Of course the outlet was perfectly placed partially behind one of the shelves.  I couldn’t avoid this because I needed a certain amount of space between the fabric covered shelf and bookcase for the t.v.  The halfway point for the bookcase is right where the outlet was.

 Here is how I got my shelves from this:

To this:

 Do you see the two baskets with lids?  The baskets didn’t come with lids,  I just cut a piece of wood to fit over the top and covered it with leftover fabric from here.  The basket on the left side stores my DVDs.  The basket on the right stores this:

See all that cord craziness?  It is actually all organized because its looped and labeled.  It looks crazy because there are alot, so it’s all crammed in, but you can tell what goes to what and get to it pretty easily.  Here is the cable mess I had to tame:

• Cable Line to Modem (we don’t have cable t.v.  our cable service is for our internet.  I will post how we live life without cable soon)
• Modem to Roku (internet streaming device for your t.v)
• Modem to apple airport thing. (Not sure what that does but it does something because if you unplug it nothing works)
• DVD Player to t.v
• cord from Roku to t.v. (to watch Netflix and amazon and Hulu)
• And then all the devices power cords  (that’s 5 power chords including the t.v)

So I decided to put our power strip in the basket and cut a hole in the back of the basket for the cord to go to the outlet

I also poked holes in the basket for the t.v. cord and cable chord to come in.  I then made a lid for the basket using the same wood and fabric as I did for the other basket.  Instead, I drilled a hole into the back of the lid for wires to come out. ( I ended up have to make the hole a little bigger than pictured)

aaa

I organized the wires, plugged them in, fed them though the holes and attached them to their devices.  There were a few chords that connected device to device, I just put those devices together and if there was excess, fed it down through the hole.  This is what I came up with:

The only problem was the wires coming from the back of the t.v.

 I knew that these would be hidden for the most part behind my decor but I wanted it tucked away nicely so I nailed a nail behind the chords:

The nail holds the cords behind the devices quite nicely.

All that was Left was hiding the cable chord.

 A fabric covered box (that also holds DVDs) with some books on top did the trick nicely.  Due to iTunes, amazon, and Roku we rarely watch our limited collection of DVDs so I rarely have to get into the boxes. The fabric covered box was once an old Pi Phi angel box that my “Big Sis” in my sorority gave me.  ITs a sturdy box so I couldn’t get rid of it, but I just didn’t feel right sportin’  the college love front in center in my living room. So I covered the box with fabric. 

Once I got the best of the stuff in there was definitely not any evidence of chords.

I did have to make a last minute switch that I thought I would share just incase you do something like this.  Do you see how my devices are stacked on top of each other?

Stacking them like this didn’t allow the devices to vent out their heat well.  They were getting hot because one would vent into the other and it make both of them HOT!  So, I had to separate them.  It was not hard, I  just had to get some slack out of the hole on some of them.  I moved two on top of a book which sat on top of the DVD player.  The good news is the DVD player is rarely used AND vents out the left side! Finally something that I didn’t have to overcome.   I didn’t like the empty space above the white apple airport device.

So I just cut some wood and wrapped it with scrapbook paper.

aaa

I actually like the added color.

There is how I hid my cords!  Do any of you hate cords as much as I do?  Sometimes there is nothing you can do but if there is an inkling of a chance…I always try to hide them.  The great thing is I spent $0 to do it!

Update:  stacking my electronic devices didn’t allow for some of them to vent out their heat so we updated this by separating them with small pieces of wood between them if the vent was out of the top of the device instead of the side or front.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer

If you liked this post you might like these:

The Little Lack Part 1

The Finished Bookcase

Little Lack Part 2