I really wanted to finish the basement myself, but I knew that it would take me 20 years. So instead, we hired someone else to do it, but we saved a built-in for me. In the middle of a wall we had a water meter jutting out from the foundation. We decided to box it in with drywall and this left a space that cried out for a built-in. Unfortunately the depth of the shelf only turned out to be about 16", which was not enough to accomodate any of our TVs. So we had to get one of those flat screen ones, and it seemed only right that we get one that filled up the space that I had alloted for the TV, hence the 42 incher.
Something that was kind of fun about this was that instead of trying to build something perfectly straight and square, I was trying to fit into a space that was neither square nor straight. It was actually a big relief - anything that ended up crooked was not my fault - I was just matching what was already there.
