Living Room DIY Built In Cabinets with Stock Cabinets

How we created a DIY built in entertainment center in our living room using stock cabinets!

Our living room has just one full wall and it wasn’t being utilized well with furniture from our past home. So, we turned our dream of adding living room built in cabinets to the wall into reality!

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My vision for these built-ins was to create closed storage for our kids toys, custom shelving for pretty decor, and a place for our Frame TV to fit perfectly and look like a piece of art.

To make this project easier, I found these ready to go cabinets from Lowe’s. I fell in love with the molding detail on the door fronts and knew they’d be perfect for the look I wanted to create.

They would be great anywhere you need a ready to go cabinet installed, not just for built ins!

Can you believe these stock cabinets turned into this living room built in? It came out even better than I thought it would!

You can see more of this project in action in my Instagram stories and my Instagram reel, which was sponsored by Lowe’s.

Today I want to share an overview of how we turned these stock cabinets into a DIY built in entertainment center.

I realize that not everyone wants to DIY a project like this, but if you are interested in hiring it out, hopefully these details will help as well!

All supplies that we used can be found in my Lowe’s Storefront here!

The base for the living room built in cabinets

We began building the base of the cabinets with a support frame out of a 2×6 ripped down to 4.5″ tall. We designed it to have a 3.5″ bump out for the middle cabinets to give it a custom look!

Then, we added blocking in between the cabinets and on the sides for trim. The blocking enabled us to create trim for the face frame of the cabinets that was 1.5″ thick.

Since the cabinets came with a full overlay cabinet door over their existing face frame, we had to recreate the face frame to get that custom look!

For the countertop, we stacked premium 3/4″ and 1/2″ plywood together to make it 1 1/4″ thick to fit this beautiful, shelf edge trim.

Adding charm and character to the built ins

To make this project custom and charming, I tried to add pretty molding wherever I could, including the sides with this molding, the counter top edges, and the top of the built ins with this pretty crown molding.

Further, we created custom, curved toe kicks which really elevated the look. We cut these using our jigsaw. See this in action in my Instagram reel!

The top of the DIY living room built ins

We built the top of the built ins to fit a 50 inch Frame TV in the center and to fit even more cabinetry in the middle. We will eventually add a frame on the Frame TV, so we left extra room for that.

The top middle part was built with a 2×4 support frame to install the TV mount to and we drilled a hole through the plywood cover to run a hidden TV cord to our outlet (that is inside of the right base cabinet).

The plywood and 2x4s were assembled using pocket holes with our Kreg Jig and wood glue.

We finished the sides off with upper shelving. I stacked two 3/4″ thick plywood boards together to create the thicker shelves.

Again the whole thing was designed to have a 1.5″ wide face frame around it, so this meant adding more wood blocking where needed.

The final dimensions of our living room built ins

The final dimensions are 94″ tall x 100.5″ wide x 17 deep.

Painting the built in cabinets

After lots of wood filler, the built ins were primed and then painted Cornwall Slate by Sherwin Williams in satin. You can learn how to paint cabinets and more about the best cabinet paint types here!

I love this color and I have used it on our shiplap fireplace, office makeover, and beadboard accent wall. Here it is in different lighting from a photo on my phone:

Decorating our new built ins and what’s next!

The only “decor” we’ve added so far is our new 50″ Frame TV! I wanted the TV to look like a piece of art and the Frame TV is well worth the investment!

It really looks like art and the quality is amazing. It’s the nicest and smartest TV I’ve ever owned and we all love it. I can’t wait to add a vintage style frame to it, to really make it look like art even more!

I can’t wait to decorate these built ins next, especially for the fall and for the holidays! In addition to decorating them, we are going to update our fireplace mantel and finish our living room makeover, including a new couch!

Stay tuned, lots of exciting projects and decor to come! What would you decorate these built ins with?!

Any questions for me about this project and DIY built-ins? Let me know below in the comments!

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