The picture below shows the big center unit completed. I built it first with a solid back, then realized that it would work better with a false back behind the TV so all the wires could be hidden but still easily accessed.

In this next photo you can see one of the 2 boxes that will flank the main TV unit. I decided to add some recessed puck lighting and also make the shelf below it a little shallower to make that a display area. As you can see, it is currently displaying a nice yellow and black tape measure!

Notice on the left hand side of this photo our existing CD rack. I was originally going to build a new CD/DVD cabinet (on the far left) with 8 or 10 shelves. After seeing how everything lined up, I realized that our existing CD rack would fit inside the newly built cabinet perfectly. It would save a lot of time and materials to just put the existing rack into the cabinet, then slap a face frame on it. Loaded up with CDs I think it’ll be hard to notice it isn’t entirely “built-in” !

And here everything is slapped together. The floor is out of level about 3/8” from the left side of the center to the right. With the bottom face frame and new base moulding I am hoping to hide that pretty well.

The next big decision is how to stain the unit! The photos above show our sample board. We are down to two options – the natural stain which is was applied to the left side of the TV panel, and minwax “Jacobean” stain applied on the right side of the panel.

I like the idea of the simplicity of just a natural poly – it will be hard to mess up. But as the face frames and doors will be QSWO and trying to follow the Arts and crafts look, it seems the jacobean darker stain a good choice.

What is everyone’s thought on this? How hard will it be to get a uniform stain across the whole piece? Any advice would be greatly appreciated as this is the largest piece i’ve worked on to date.

Thanks for reading!

The whole unit will be 10’ wide by 8’ high. Below is a photo of the area before the project started.

I really need to learn how to use Sketchup, but for now my hand drawings will have to do. This is the mockup I drew before getting started. I planned to build 4 seperate boxes. The biggest and deepest would house the TV, and have an open shelf above and below the TV for speaker and A/V components. Also planned to add two drawers at the bottom of this unit. The flanking boxes would have a big space at the bottom to accomadate the main speakers, with a few open shelves above and matching doors at the top. I planned the box on the far left to be very shallow and have lots of shelves to hold CDs and DVDs.

We decided to build it out of white oak, so bought 6 sheets of 3/4” plywood for the carcasses, 3 sheets of 1/4” oak ply for the backs, and about 120bf of QSWO for the face frames and door rails and stiles.

And thus, a project begins!