Last month Susan decided to redecorate our front living room. I agreed, as long as the last step involved buying a new television and hanging it on the wall. We shook hands, and shortly after the new sectional, rug, and chaise lounge arrived, so did the new television.

This is the first television we’ve ever mounted to a wall. While that was relatively simple, it left us with a small stack of electronics piled on top of a TV tray.

I waited a week and the items did not organize themselves, so I decided I was going to have to do it.

My plan was to build a box — a box that hung on the wall and held four items: a computer, cable box, blu-ray player, and wireless streaming box. The PC has the biggest footprint of the four at 16″ deep, but I played around with some measurements and figured that if it were a foot deep it would look okay. Based on that, I bought one piece of wood, 8′ long and 1′ deep. With that, I built this:

It’s 2′ wide and 1′ tall. I offset the middle shelf a bit (the box is upside-down in this picture) so that the bottom shelf could hold the PC and the cable box, with the smaller/thinner items going on the top.

I then applied what I thought was a thin coat of wood putty to all the box’s imperfections. It turned out to be joint compound. After waiting a day for that to dry, I sanded 90% of that off. Unfortunately, while sanding it down, big chunks fell out of the cracks I had filled.

I then sanded some more, and repaired some more, and then after three days of messing with this stupid box, I put it out by the trash.

Today I found this little end table at Target. It holds all of our stuff, matches the room, and most importantly, was already assembled.

If anyone wants a mostly assembled box/shelf with more than a few imperfections, it’ll be out by the trash Monday morning.