Hacked Ikea TV Stand

We've been working on finding a television stand for our television that will fit a desktop computer. I actually find it AMAZING that furniture manufacturers haven't figured out that this would be a good idea yet. Perhaps our television watching habits are in the minority?

For a long time, we watched all our 'television' on our laptops via what's-available-online. Surprisingly, my parents weren't so cool with 4 adults and 2 kids crowded in front of a 12" laptop monitor when they visited and wanted to watch something. So last year for Christmas, they gave us a television.

Like anyone who spent too many hours in front of the computer, our immediate thought was to hook the television up to a computer so that it could be A GIANT COMPUTER MONITOR, of course. We could store family photos on the computer and see them life size whenever we wanted! Hurray! We forget that a television can operate on its own. And the setup looked like this for about a year: (You'll need to look past the cute little keyboard surfer to see it.)

My father, determined to show us that a television doesn't require an expensive cable package or satellite dish, bought the antenae as well. Oh, cool, we're so retro!

Naturally, having all these computer pieces out and available to little fingers was less than ideal. You might notice the DVD drawer hanging open in the above photo. (See? I'm so glad Fritz doesn't read this blog. He'd be awfully grumpy if I knew I was taking semi-witty photos of the toddler and while letting our poor DVD drawer just hang there all exposed-like. Nevermind what's happening to the poor keyboard.)

It took us a year (and Ikea finally opening) to find some sort of semi-workable alternative.

We ended up buying two Vika Annefors, mounting them back to back, and covering the openings with a piece of board we painted to match. The board 'floats' away from the cabinet to allow for more air circulation. We cut pieces of plastic pipe to use as the spacers at the points where we screwed the board to the Vika Annefors. I'm going to let the photos tell the rest of the story.

It's definitely NOT a fine piece of furniture, but it's working well considering informality of the room and the short the lifespan of our furniture. (Have you noticed how quickly kids have a way of destroying things?)  Also, I think that most people could do this themselves. The basic design would be pretty easy to snazz up with a different material for the floating center board or baskets for hidden storage on the shelves.

Fritz thinks we need a family seal to paint on the 'floating' center board.

Seque

I took down most of our holiday decorations last weekend. Honestly, I wasn't ready to take them down. But Fritz's mother – my mother-in-law – arrives in less than 1 week for 2 weeks. That was all the motivation I needed to start prepping.

While I took down the exterior lights, the boys played outside in the front yard. Mattias needed so much less supervision than he did three months ago, that I actually managed to get the lights down, as opposed to running, catching, and carrying him away from the street. It was so nice and lovely outside that nobody needed a coat.

Noah, nonetheless, has started to put on Mattias's coat for him when we are heading out. It's amazingly helpful to have the four year old dressing the one year old. Noah also sets the table without prompting. He uses the 'good dishes' and leaves the Ikea plasticware in the cabinet. So, I packed up the plasticware, while packing up the Christmas ornaments.

Plates and glasses will be breaking in our future; I'm ready. Breaking dishes will be part of learning about manners (I think). I bought new (cheap) ceramic plates in preparation. I'm more worried about the damage to the wood floor than plates themselves.

The wood floors begin to take more abuse when the weather gets nice, anyway. It's the sand: sand that is tracked inside in the warm weather. (Whose idea was it to give the boys a sandbox?)

The neighbors have also been outside in force this week, thanks to the nice weather. I find myself being my version of a social butterfly. By any objective standard, this is not very social. But for me, I'm feeling mentally exhausted from all the small talk. All the small talk is occupying the part of my brain that is usually reserved for blogging.

I secretly hope it gets cold again soon. Because I kind of miss sitting here at my computer typing.

Does your husband read your blog?

Don't you think this is an interesting question?

I do.

Answer 1:
No, Fritz doesn't. Not really. I don't like to admit that. (Intentionally avoiding further elaboration.)

I've tried typing out the other answer with all it's various qualifications so that my answer is: Yes, he IS reading my blog! The post got really long. Finally, I appeased myself with this:

Answer 2:
Yes, he reads my blog if I tell him to.

All of this thinking about answering such a seemingly simple and direct question gave me three more thoughts about myself and blogging:

1) Blogging about kids when they are younger is probably – definitely? – much easier because the parent-child relationship is clear(er). Clearer both to the parent/blogger and to the outside world. Older people relationships or longer term relationships are more complex and less suited to the blogging-stand-alone-post-format.

2) Nonetheless, there's something intriguing, frightening, and challenging about trying to blog about complex relationships. Is it impossible? Decidedly, morally wrong? I don't think so.

3) Sometimes I find it very difficult to walk away from something once it's been framed as a Challenge.