Funky Built-In Make-Over

From the moment I saw this wall of make-shift shelving, I knew that I wanted to rip that thing out!
The cubbies were an odd size, the bookshelves were limited and where the television is meant to go is all sorts of wrong. For one thing, built-ins like these don't really work with modern television sets... flat panel televisions make for lots of wasted space in built-ins like these. (I realize that we don't have a flat panel television- but we do want to get one in the near future). Also, this built-in would require that our television set be less than 35" and that just isn't something that we want to commit to. Lastly, if we were to use this space to house our tv set.... it would be on the ground. We would be looking down at it, and it would subsequently require that our couch be positioned in front of our big beautiful front window.

Unfortunately, our budget ran out quickly (thanks to lots of paint and new carpeting) so we had to settle with the fact that this wall was going to be here for a while. A quick coat of paint instantly made it look 100x better! But now I was faced with the obstacle of coming up with a functional use for this funky space.

I used another DIY blog to come up with some simple and affordable ideas. I found some storage ottomans in the "dorm room" section of Kohls so I scooped up two of them to serve as additional seating for if we ever have more people over than traditional chairs. I also found some collapsible storage cubes that I thought could be handy for extra blankets on chilly evenings. To round it out I used the book shelves to store our smaller (in size) book collection and also put the porcelain kitty treat jar and silk hat box to fill in extra spaces and add some color.

For the finishing touch- I hung a "B" in the main space. I love monograms and had been looking for a nifty way to incorporate one in our home. Luckily, this "B" was hanging out in the clearance section :)

Here's the finished product:

I really like the space now! It fills it up without looking cluttered and the cats kinda dig the extension of their cat tree (which is on the other side) as you can see from Misty sitting on her perch.