My hubby and I completed this project last week. I tell you what, it has already been a life saver! This was a complete group effort,but he did most of the work, lol. It started as just an idea he had and then he went to work looking on-line for ideas on different ways to do it. This is actually the beginning, we plan on making some changes too it as time and money allow.
What caused this whole thing to come together started after I opened my laptop (fairly new mind you) and found that the screen was cracked! I was sick, what was I going to do now?I looked to see how much it cost to get the screen repaired, wow! might as well buy an new one (which I am going to have to do anyway, booo). But what do you do with a laptop that is in perfect condition, memory wise anyway, but you still can't really use it? We did hook it up to the TV's from time to time, but let's face it, no one wants to give up TV time for mom to be on Pintrest. So that is where we began.
For those of you that know me I have four busy children that just keep growing up! Boy, did I think they were busy when they were little, now that they are becoming teens, we are even busier! Between drama, band, sports, church activities, the list goes on and on, it is really hard to keep up. Not to mention, how many times, ladies, have you told your husband about some activity coming up and he says he doesn't know what you are talking about ("You never told me that was going on?"), well now no one has an excuse!
Back to the nuts and bolts. My hubby went to a local computer repair place and found an old monitor for $20, he then came home and mounted it to the wall. We had an old monitor bracket laying around from a different computer, but you can use a regular TV bracket if you want, just make sure that the monitor you get can be attached to it. Then he just hooked up the computer. He cleaned up my laptop, got rid of most of the "extra stuff" on it so there was a lot of space and memory. He then went looking for a program on-line that would work for the "hub". We came across this one,http://www.tudorspan.com/trial.aspx. It works great for us. He then started tweaking things. He made it so that I can listen to my music off of iTunes. He then downloaded a weather program, a must in Oklahoma! It just went from there. We are still tweaking it, ultimately he wants to get me a touch screen so it will make it even easier. I will keep try to keep you all up to date on the things that we add to it. Right now he is working on a grocery/pantry database to help keep track of all the food and household items we have on hand. He then wants to get me a scanner, like in the grocery store, so that all I have to do is scan items as they come in the house, or go out so we always know what is on hand!
As for the "look" that was where I come in. I didn't like the look of the scratched up black frame of the monitor, and it was an odd shape for a regular picture frame (which might also work if you can find one to fit the frame). So my hubby went to Lowes (Me too after I messed up the first time) and we picked out some decorative molding. We don't have a miter saw, nor know how to use one, so we got the "bullet" molding to put in the corners and then I just cut the molding to fit the space, some Gorilla Glue and some sawing and voila, you have a frame. I did have to do some work to make sure that the buttons on the front of the monitor would be accessible, so I used my husband's Drimmel to cut out the space for the buttons. It was a lot of fun and it looks really good. You can then paint it to match your decor. Another thing to remember, this monitor had built in speakers, they were on the front. For us this wan't a problem, they didn't work anyway, so I just covered them up with the frame. We had to hook up some external speakers, they are probably better than what the monitor had anyway, lol. But if you do buy a monitor with external speakers you might want to take note of where they are if you are going to frame it up.
Well, I hope you like it, I know we do! I plan on expanding my wood working projects and my hubby his tech abilities. So as more projects come along I will try and post those too. Thanks for taking a look at our first one!
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