Living room makeover following a bad day

Yesterday was not a good day. Work was annoying because the project I'm on right now involves a third-party that does not have their stuff together. When I finally left, I went to my car to find the front of it was under six inches of water due to a drain that was blocked. How that happens at the top of a hill I have no idea. So I flooded my shoes and got substantially wet. Then I had to detour around town just to get out of it due to flooding.

I mentioned that I had to buy a replacement for my receiver since it kept crapping out on me. Well despite free ground shipping from Amazon, it got here in just one day (apparently Amazon has a DC in Cincy). I came home to find it in the very Sony box you'd see in retail ("Gee, do you suppose that's a receiver?"), sitting on my front step. The moron UPS guy put a plastic bag over it, but not around it, so the bottom side was quite wet.

When I popped the box, I was relieved to find that the unit was dry and all was well inside. When I started to play with it, however, I was disappointed to find that Sony has really taken a step in the wrong direction in terms of ergonomics and control design in their components. Too many menus and things. Still, it was a functional replacement.

As I started to pull out the old unit from the rack, I began to feel my frustration regarding the giant entertainment center. When I was in college, I bought my first stereo rack. Back then, you needed a rack when you bought components, because there was so much stuff to buy. Receiver, CD player, cassette deck, VCR, Nintendo, and later on, DVD player. Plus I had a 200-disc changer back in the day, which was enormous.

One Christmas, Stephanie's former step mom wanted to buy us an entertainment center, which I was all for. The 20" tube TV we had was on a $30 TV stand, and my rack was starting to show its age. So we got this giant thing from Best Buy that had shelves on both sides, and it was deep enough to hold the giant CD player. The big unit even made the move to the house from the apartment.

About a year ago, I bought my current TV, a 37" LCD, and gave the old 27" Sony tube TV to Steph (that thing was a bitch to move!). The new TV didn't quite fit in the giant entertainment center, at least not without being angled a bit. It annoyed me. The rack was now filled mostly with photos and books, because these days my entire component list consists of the receiver, my DVR computer (in a stereo-style case), and Xbox 360. So this giant piece of furniture was dominating the room, and wasn't even that functional. What was even worse, and maybe part of the reason the old receiver was failing, was that the three components in there all generated massive heat that had nowhere to go.

That annoyed me, so instead of putting it all back in, I decided it was time to redecorate. Besides, I wasn't going to do any work on my projects with my high level of frustration on the day, and I had been sitting on my ass all week long.

I've been searching for a TV stand that could hold everything below it, but never did find anything that was deep enough to hold the DVR computer. My first and only stop was Target. They have all of that imitation Crate & Barrel trendy stuff that is reasonably priced. I found a TV stand I really liked, even though it couldn't hold the receiver or DVR. Right next to it was a very open "audio pier" that matched, and was only about four feet tall. This could be a more functional arrangement, I thought. So for $260, I decided to go for it.

Of course, since the world was clearly against me for the day, it was raining hard. I managed to get the boxes on top of a cart, and out of the store. Within a minute of getting to my car, I was soaked, as was the top box. I got the stuff into my car, strained my back and arms, and headed home.

The shelves took an hour and a half to build, but the stand took less than an hour. The open nature requires some careful cable management, but it's fairly well hidden. The room now feels much bigger. I'm not sure I like having the left speaker not equidistant from the TV as the right, but I'll probably move it. The rest of the room is in chaos still, not to mention the giant old entertainment center is still in the room.