DIY vertical center channel entertainment center.
PubFiction
Posts: 105
Introduction:
I have started building an entertainment center and wanted to post the work log and pictures. Mostly because I think my problems in life are similar to most normal people and so my solution might be valuable. Also a good way for me to rant =]
Here is the purpose, or problems. I have a small living room like many and that puts constraints on exactly where things can be, it also does not seat very many people, so we want to get the most seats possible in case we have guests over, obviously not all seats will be in the ideal listening postion. There are doors or archways on 3 walls in the middle ruining any chance of sectioning off an area. The only possible place to sort of center a TV was on one wall that also had a window. So we were hoping to have enough space by the TV to put in 2 emergency seats lol. We also decided we wanted to mount the TV on the wall to move it as far back as possible so if someone uses these emergency seats they can still see the TV (not the most comfortable I know). We also run a business out of the house which consumes every single spare room and space in the house so there was no option to make a HT room somewhere else.
So this left us with a fairly narrow set of guidelines for the entertainment center and we exhausted every possible retail option in town and online looking for something that would fit. Nothing did. So if you make furniture listen up your industry is failing. I actually have a very simple HT setup, we use an HTPC , a receiver and a center speaker. We now have an amp but could have gone without one if needed. Then there is the cable box. That is it, no consoles because computers can do so much more and nothing else. The movies and everything is done through the HTPC. And the kicker is the HTPC is actually in the office so it doesn?t even need to be placed in the entertainment center. On top of that we have exactly 1 blu ray, all others are stored on the hard drives in the HTPC, music is of course also on the HTPC, movies are otherwise rented or streamed.
So one would imagine with almost nothing to take up space other than bog standard, center speaker and receiver, it would be easy to find an entertainment center. Nope lol. We literally spent a couple months looking because we are busy and did not want to make something. Every place we went to had the same problems, at the top center of any HT system you could not fit a center speaker that is more than like 5 inches. The few that could do this always had some other problem, like there was no space to stick the receiver unless we tipped it on its side. Online there were better options but most of them were either way to big, or way too small and would look funny. Finally I caved in and decided to build one.
So I spent another week or so scouting all the home improvement stores to look for what could be built with not a lot of work and not a ton of tools. I don?t have a table saw, I do have a mitre and radial arm saw. No router, so it had to be pre made trim. And if I was to do it I wanted to do it right and make sure it would fit what I had now and maybe a little more down the line.
I have started building an entertainment center and wanted to post the work log and pictures. Mostly because I think my problems in life are similar to most normal people and so my solution might be valuable. Also a good way for me to rant =]
Here is the purpose, or problems. I have a small living room like many and that puts constraints on exactly where things can be, it also does not seat very many people, so we want to get the most seats possible in case we have guests over, obviously not all seats will be in the ideal listening postion. There are doors or archways on 3 walls in the middle ruining any chance of sectioning off an area. The only possible place to sort of center a TV was on one wall that also had a window. So we were hoping to have enough space by the TV to put in 2 emergency seats lol. We also decided we wanted to mount the TV on the wall to move it as far back as possible so if someone uses these emergency seats they can still see the TV (not the most comfortable I know). We also run a business out of the house which consumes every single spare room and space in the house so there was no option to make a HT room somewhere else.
So this left us with a fairly narrow set of guidelines for the entertainment center and we exhausted every possible retail option in town and online looking for something that would fit. Nothing did. So if you make furniture listen up your industry is failing. I actually have a very simple HT setup, we use an HTPC , a receiver and a center speaker. We now have an amp but could have gone without one if needed. Then there is the cable box. That is it, no consoles because computers can do so much more and nothing else. The movies and everything is done through the HTPC. And the kicker is the HTPC is actually in the office so it doesn?t even need to be placed in the entertainment center. On top of that we have exactly 1 blu ray, all others are stored on the hard drives in the HTPC, music is of course also on the HTPC, movies are otherwise rented or streamed.
So one would imagine with almost nothing to take up space other than bog standard, center speaker and receiver, it would be easy to find an entertainment center. Nope lol. We literally spent a couple months looking because we are busy and did not want to make something. Every place we went to had the same problems, at the top center of any HT system you could not fit a center speaker that is more than like 5 inches. The few that could do this always had some other problem, like there was no space to stick the receiver unless we tipped it on its side. Online there were better options but most of them were either way to big, or way too small and would look funny. Finally I caved in and decided to build one.
So I spent another week or so scouting all the home improvement stores to look for what could be built with not a lot of work and not a ton of tools. I don?t have a table saw, I do have a mitre and radial arm saw. No router, so it had to be pre made trim. And if I was to do it I wanted to do it right and make sure it would fit what I had now and maybe a little more down the line.