Living Room Storage Help Needed

[lemondrop]

We're closing on a small townhouse on Friday. We plan to live in it for a year or so; then rent it out and move up, so to speak. The living room is a bit awkward. It's a combo living/dining room with a fireplace that we walk right into from the front door. Also, the sliding door to the patio is right next to the front door (there's another unit on the back of our house).

We're putting the tv above the fireplace because that really is the only place to put it based on where the front entryway is located. We're having trouble deciding what to put next to it for dvd, toy and component storage. We're also considering replacing the current mantle with a floating shelf to hold the cable box and ps3.

We've considered bookshelves, cabinets and modular storage units, but we're having trouble deciding what would balance the fireplace, hold our stuff, and not cost too much.

Any suggestions?


This is the front door/patio side.


Another bad photo, sorry.

Oh, and we're removing the terrible rope trim that runs down the side of the fireplace.

[ssmjlm]

I might look into floating shelves since there's a register on the floor there. Either DIY for the space or if IKEA's lack would work.

[housegeek]

How wide and deep is that space? I might look into putting 2 Billys or 2 bookcases from Walmart in there (you could even trim it out to make it look better). You could cut out the spot that the grill is at and leave it open)As for the cable box, if we put the tv above the fireplace, were going to run the cables in the wall and to the side so we can have all the electronics tucked away, maybe you could do something similar.

[thiswillbe]

I'm not sure of your style, but I was thinking IKEA, too. It looks like the space might be perfect for an EXPEDIT on it's side (with some legs, of course, so it's up off the register). We got one as a room divider in our old house, and plan to repurpose it in the new one because the storage bins that go in the openings are pretty large and hold lots of toys.

ETA: the bins they show that "go" with it were more than we wanted to spend, but we found that the SKUBB bins (3 for $15) fit perfectly.

[lemondrop]

You ladies are thinking along the lines we are. We just can't make a decision! It's actually fairly deep, so we could do the Billy or Expedit easily. I hadn't thought of the legs to keep if off the floor.

House- H doesn't want to put in the effort to hide the cables since we aren't staying here permanently. Unless, he gets fed up with seeing them.