Here is the completed blanket chest! I won’t say how long it took to make because it’s embarrasingly long for a simple project (there was some grad school mixed in there).

I blogged about the whole build here:
http://lumberjocks.com/HungryTermite/blog/series/2377

Last year I got tired of having my plasma sitting precariously on a stool and my A/V equipment stacked on the floor. This was my own design built from clear pine from Home Depot. I built this using only a circular saw, a router, a hand saw, and a few sanders, and I built it (unwisely) on the kitchen table in my 1 bedroom apartment. I finished it with a gel stain and some wipe on poly. Although the finish did not come out as red as I wanted, I did like the final finish.

The joinery is all routed dados for the permanent shelves and pins for the 3 adjustable height shelves. The top is just glued up with a mitered breadboard end. All the glued up panels are using butt joints. Flattening all the panels in my kitchen using the belt sander was certainly a learning experience. The more I learn about furniture design and wood movement I wouldn’t be very surprised if this fell apart one day but for now it’s pretty rock solid.

One of the images is a computer generated image from the CAD program I used to design it. I was quite happy with the design. The upper middle section contains my center channel speaker and is the exact size of the speaker so it looks built in. The back edge of the unit sits right against the wall but all the shelves stop about 10 inches short of the back so there is a lot of room for cable management. You can’t see any cables from the front, which is exactly what I was going for. There is even space behind the center channel for a power bar which keeps everything well hidden.

This was intended as a prototype so I hope I have a chance to build this again in the future out of something like cherry.