Living Room Built-Ins

If you are in the process of renovating or building a house and are needing help with planning the scale of your builtins, this post is for you!

Planning & Designing around a 75″ TV

We designed and built our house and knew we wanted to have a gas fireplace without a hearth (meaning no step up ledge for the kids to bump their heads on, and the fireplace insert as low to the ground as possible). We also wanted to get the biggest TV possible, that fit the scale of the room, so the entire design was based off of comfortably fitting a 75″ TV above the fireplace, because to my husband (and probably for yours) that is a very important detail.

Our Dimensions: 19′ wide wall, by 15′ tall. Since this is a vaulted room I knew I would need to make the height of the builtins taller than your average cabinets, but building them all the way up to the ceiling wouldn’t have made sense visually so I decided on 10′ tall cabinets (which also matched my kitchen which is on the opposite wall).

A 75″ TV is about 66″ wide (the 75″ is the diagonal measurement). You want to leave no less than 5″ on each side of your TV of blank wall (fireplace) and no more than 10″. I have 7″ of fireplace wall on each side of my TV which feels perfect to me.

I also wanted to add some dimension with the fireplace having a two tier look, so this took up another 8″ on each side making my fireplace a total of 95″ wide (79″ behind the TV). My fireplace is also 29″ deep from the back wall to the front drywall not including the fireplace surround.
PS: These are the finished drywall dimensions.

Once I subtracted 95″ of fireplace from my 19′ wall that left me with 66″ on each side for the builtin cabinets. Because these cabinets are glass bookshelves stacked ontop of drawers with no countertop, I opted to make the bottom bank of drawers taller than your average countertops at 40″ high. There’s a 1″ filler piece that is on top of the drawers acting as a ledge that the uppers sit on. The uppers are 80″ including the crown.

What I Ordered & From Where

I experimented with a lot of different cabinet options during the home build and ultimately settled on ordering my cabinet boxes for this project instead of building them from scratch purely to save on time (I was also tiling 5 bathrooms and building all the bathroom vanities and kitchen cabinets myself).

My kitchen cabinets are from a company called Cabinet Joint. They have designers and cabinet coaches you work with to help you design and order all the components you need for any given cabinet job. When you are dealing with a whole room of cabinets this is the preferred method because the cabinet designer can customize the layout with their fancy software, but there is an added cost.

Because these builtins were straight forward – 2 lowers and 2 uppers per side I decided to order my cabinets through a company called Cabinotch.

What I ordered:
x4 32″ wide x 40″ tall x 18″ deep 3 drawer lower cabinets
x4 32″ wide x 80″ 15″ deep tall upper cabinets

More Details On Why I Chose Cabinotch Cabinet Boxes

Cabinotch is the least expensive CUSTOM size solid plywood option, but they require you to have a business in order to order from them and you have to have a little bit of knowledge in cabinet construction to make your selections because every detail is customizable.

Unlike IKEA which only has particle board cabinet boxes, Cabinotch offers particle board and PureBone hard plywood. The construction of the boxes take under 15 minutes each because the sides slide into the face frame or Lamello snaps.

Assembling & Paint

The cabinet boxes are sent flat and take about 15 minutes each to assemble into a box. I opted to have a face frame on all of the cabinets with inset doors (doors I ordered custom painted through NIEU Cabinet Doors. They are slim shaker detail with mullions on top. Glass was ordered locally through Murray Glass and installed with a bead of clear silicone between the frame and the glass.

We tested a few blues, and landed on Van Dusen Blue by Benjamin Moore, but unfortunately the color match didn’t match the doors I ordered, so I ended up having to paint them all by hand after spraying them. If you are ordering your cabinet doors professionally painted, and painting the cabinet box yourself I’d recommend waiting until the doors arrive to color match them.

We worked with our HVAC guy to plan for an air return to be hidden by the crown molding above the builtins. We also added a Smurf tube from behind the tv and into the side of the cabinet for HDMIs/cable boxes/video games to connect. The metal box behind the TV houses an outlet + is big enough for the Samsung Frame TV box that comes with that specific TV.

We also added electrical outlets in each side of the lower builtins for charging.

The Finished Built-Ins:

Feeling intimidated by built-ins? Start with a hybrid project. This is where you build the boxes, but you order the doors to fit. The ceilings in this room are 15 feet tall, so I opted to build the drawers 40 inches–taller than a countertop. And the total height of the built-in is 10 feet tall. I am just smitten over how these glass doors look in this space!

Feeling anxious about trying out this type of project yourself? DIY Beginner Basics is the online course that teaches YOU how to DIY. Not only will you learn how to use power tools, build cabinet boxes, and paint, but you’ll also gain the confidence to tackle your own projects. Try a FREE lesson from the course today!

Want to see the IG Reels from this project? Check them out by clicking the pictures below!