great idea! but for my place, i'd need to plexiglass pretty much everything :) i have this huge bookcase full of books and media that would need it as well. i've heard that kids pull books off shelves and rip the pages out. yikes. i have about a year to toddler proof and i'm FRIGHTENED!

"i've heard that kids pull books off shelves and rip the pages out."

sadly, i can confirm.

we've pretty much emptied our bookshelves/shelving of everything but a couple of legos.

this plexi idea is pretty genius.

Haha, what gleex said.

Actually, I'd love to do this because with kids, furniture decisions are severely limited. Having the plexiglass protects not only the books and electronics, but the kids' heads from connecting with sharp corners.

i love the way that looks. only it would take our toddler like 5 minutes to decide to reach up, grab the top edge and attempt to climb it. she wouldn't be able to scale it, but tip it over probably. is it anchored in some way?

I like the idea of encasing the whole thing for the reason Kat said.

I've also seen, commercial, smaller versions of this where the plexiglas comes from under the electronics and up in front to just cover the buttons.

brilliant. why didn't we think of that?

ha. i wonder how often they have to wipe the slobbery handprints off of it...

i've heard that kids pull books off shelves and rip the pages out.

It depends on the kid. My parents' friends had one kid who required no child-proofing at all and another who could and would bypass all child-proofing short of putting him in leg irons.

gleek, perhaps I can allay your fears by mentioning that I have a 2-and-a-half-year-old who's never intentionally wrecked a book. Our house is full of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and all the books are exposed. His own books are all on the bottom shelves, but he can definitely still reach ours if he's so inclined.

He also doesn't usually muck with our low-lying TV and DVD player, though he does like to mess with the stereo. But we realized that he only does this when he wants to listen to music, so it's pretty easy to head him off by just popping in a CD.

I don't know if it's because he's just not a destructive kid by nature, or because we've always been pretty diligent about distracting him with his own books and toys any time he shows an "unhealthy" interest in ours. Don't get me started on his fascination with cables, wires, and electrical outlets, though. Ay-yi-yi.

Hi, I'm one of the parents. Thanks for the compliments! I'm popping up to answer a few questions (and also for the ego bath of seeing that people like the design; yes, I am pathetic).

karey: it wraps around ~5 or 6 inches/side in the back (think of it as a giant sideways cuff bracelet) for exactly that reason. Ours does grab the top and haul on it, and it's held up so far. (She's a skinny minnie, though (~28# at 2.5 yo), so I am a little apprehensive about what is going to happen when her bruiser brother (~23#, 10 mo) gets mobile enough to attack it.)

kat: yeah, sharp edges was one of the driving forces, bc the media center is pretty sharp and once we contemplated padding the edges and blocking off access to the buttons ... well, ta-da! plexiglass enclosure! I should note, though, that plexiglass sheets max out at something like 86 in (? this was a while ago), so while the near corner (pictured) is a bend, the far corner (near the plants) is a join, which means it is also sharp. However, if someone does run into it, the enclosure would give more than the media center, and luckily the wall/furniture layout makes it hard to get a lot of momentum heading into the sharp corner.

dcmom: actually, not as often as you'd think! probably mostly bc bro is not yet mobile ...