Expert: Rachel Mallon Allied Member ASID - 7/3/2008

Question
First, let me describe what I have.  I have a large living room/dining room with no wall between the two.  There is a natural divide because of the ceiling.  The ceiling in the living room section angles upwards with the roof line starting at around 8 feet on the outside wall and going up to around 12 feet at the beginning of the dining room.  At that point, the ceiling drops again to around 8 feet.  The wall between the living room and kitchen is around 8 feet tall with a space above it as the ceiling slopes.  This creates a very open feel.  Because of the layout with windows, doors, etc.. We placed our entertainment center as a divide between the living room and dining room.  Our entertainment center is simply IKEA book shelves with no back and square sections for the books.  We have one bookshelf on it side as the base, one on each side, and a shelf on top.    The result is a very open, very large entertainment center that we love.  Here's my problem.  Because of the nature of our entertainment center, cables are difficult to hide.  If the entertainment center were against a wall, it wouldn't be a problem as I can hide them from the living room side.  my problem is that i can't hide them from the dining room side.  I am thinking about adding a temporary wall (even though I really like the open space) just to hide the wires but I can't think of anything that would look good.  Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. (Sorry about the long question.)

Answer
Hi Blake,
Some suggestions to use instead of building a wall would be a shoji screen, or hanging fabric to hide the cords. If you can send an image to rachelmallon@gmail.com I can help you further. Hope this helps and good luck.

Rachel Mallon, ASID
Interior Designer
http://www.roominabook.com