Joined
·
23,171 Posts
I made a media center for my living room some time ago. It is 10 ft across, and I decided not to make the base cabinet. Instead I cut down the height of five, 24 inch kitchen cabinets with a door on the bottom and drawer on top. The front is all oak with panels in the doors. They are affixed to the wall. For the top, I found two 11 ft long pieces of glued up pine and joined them with biscuits and glue. You can see the white trim on the front of the top. The top itself is covered with a dark laminant flooring material. The contrast is very nice and the surface stays nice looking. On top are two, 33 inch wide bookshelves.
I used an old Norm Abrams trick, putting T nuts into the bottom braces on the cabinets and put a bolt in with a slot cut in the end so I could screw them up or down to get everyting level and tightly connected. The electrical and other wiring comes through the back of the cabinets. The cubby on top was cut to be a perfect fit between the two bookshelves. There are strip lights under the top that I forgot to light up in the picture.
At some point, I will probably finish the bottom, and install some full extension inside drawers to put some of the DVD collection out of sight. Everything is connected to the wall. There are some LED ceiling lights that illuminate the shelves. Had to cut some of the cabinet away on the bottom, back right to make way for the hearth.
The walls are slightly bowed, so I hand fitted some trim to the wall so the connection looks very nice. Have never finished the oak cabinets. Thinking of painting them because I really don't care much for the look of finished oak, but my wife does, which helps explain why they're still unfinished.
I have built cabinets but decided to speed this up with cabinets that were on sale. Like most flat surfaces in my home, it quickly became a catch all, although some of the cabinets are empty. I have to reconnect cables so they're out of sight, but had a hook-up problem when we got a larger TV recently.
I used an old Norm Abrams trick, putting T nuts into the bottom braces on the cabinets and put a bolt in with a slot cut in the end so I could screw them up or down to get everyting level and tightly connected. The electrical and other wiring comes through the back of the cabinets. The cubby on top was cut to be a perfect fit between the two bookshelves. There are strip lights under the top that I forgot to light up in the picture.
At some point, I will probably finish the bottom, and install some full extension inside drawers to put some of the DVD collection out of sight. Everything is connected to the wall. There are some LED ceiling lights that illuminate the shelves. Had to cut some of the cabinet away on the bottom, back right to make way for the hearth.
The walls are slightly bowed, so I hand fitted some trim to the wall so the connection looks very nice. Have never finished the oak cabinets. Thinking of painting them because I really don't care much for the look of finished oak, but my wife does, which helps explain why they're still unfinished.
I have built cabinets but decided to speed this up with cabinets that were on sale. Like most flat surfaces in my home, it quickly became a catch all, although some of the cabinets are empty. I have to reconnect cables so they're out of sight, but had a hook-up problem when we got a larger TV recently.
