DIY TV Cabinet Above Staircase, Home Decoration With Own Design

Call it a hobby or a past time.....but the most important thing is we make use of our time effectively.

"An Idle Mind is The Devil's Workshop" : George Carlin

Yup, let's use our time to do something useful! To me, redecorating my own home can be therapeutic. There are times I feel the urge to just shift my house's furniture around. Why? Maybe just to get a sense of difference? Or just to keep my self busy? Does anyone out there do that? I had a friend who told me she shifted house very often. She would go to work in the morning and go home after work to a new house. Oh my God, I told her shifting house is a nightmare to me, imagine the amount of packing and unpacking! But she said its ok, as her husband does all that with the help of movers. I salute her and her husband, so for me, I suppose I can just manage some minor shifting of a few furnitures or adding a few bits of DIY cabinets ^-^ .

My upstairs landing had a small space of 8.3 feet by 11 feet (approx. 2.50m x 3.35m). I wanted to convert it into a TV room cum relaxing area, but it is a little bit small to fit in a TV and a folding bed sofa! So, I tried to extend one foot (30 cm) out off the landing by cutting off the railings and hoist a TV shelf /cabinet out of the floor. This TV cabinet will overhang my stair case. Actually my staircase railings just flushes just at my bedroom door frame. That's the tricky part, so I have to make thick metal frame base and weld it to the cement floor of my landing and also to the walls. Oops, so sorry I did not manage to take a photo of the landing before starting work as initially I did not intend to blog on this DIY job.

The Base and Framework

So first is the planning of the frame work and base of the TV rack. Then have done at a workshop that does window frames. The one foot wide metal frame base (green color) is then secured to the upstairs floor and side walls. The top wooden hand rail is sawn off.

The green colour metal frame base for TV cabinet is welded with angle iron and screwed onto the walls and floor securely first.

The old metal grill railings was left there for support and will only be sawn off after the whole TV cabinet is completed and ready to be placed onto the base.

The Design

The frame work of TV cabinet is fixed with plywood first. Then I sketch some drawings on how to design this frame work.

Then I went shopping for self adhesive laminating strips.

Glue the self adhesive laminating strips onto frame according to my design

I have to do the tedious job of cutting the lengths of each design one by one manually. At first I thought it was very easy, I just cut all same size strips using a paper cutter. But in reality, this is not the case! Anything at an angle can sure run out a little bit, and also the whole frame is also not exactly at right angle. Moreover, this is not a square, its a rectangle!