Entertainment Center layout help

[John Loftis]

Howdy folks. My next project is the TV Stand/ Entertainment Center for the living room. My main material is Peruvian walnut/ nogal. I've pretty much decided that the sides are going to be cope and stick with the raised panels made of mahogany. As always, I have questions... joinery of the base, how to do the feet, what type of finish, etc. But first and foremost, I could use some help with the layout.

The entertainment center can only be 54" wide, because that's how long the nogal is.

I have a moose of a center channel speaker (Paradigm, just like Matt Meiser's). Much as I'd love to get a newer, smaller one, I don't think I could slide that by the wife right now. So I'm struggling to design around the center channel hole in the cabinet. Aesthetically, the center channel needs to go in the cabinet, not sitting on top of the unit.

I've scratched out two layouts in sketchup. Would love your thoughts on which looks better, or, if you have different ideas, please let me know.

Thanks in advance,
John

[John Loftis]

As i was thinking about it, the area under the center channel in the second drawing could just as easily be two cabinet doors spanning the entire width of the center channel. That would probably look better than what I originally posted.

[Matt Meiser]

I like the first layout the best. But make sure that with your doors, hinges, stops, etch that the spaces are wide enough. 18.5" doesn't sound like enough. That middle could be split into two drawers.

[Jerome Hanby]

Not sure how often you swap out equipment, but every center I've ever had has tripped me up at some point when I added/replaced equipment.

I'd be tempted to work out some kind of "tinker toy" system that would let you change around the insides if things change in the future.

Of course that's easy to type:D

[John Loftis]

Here's another configuration of unit 2. In this layout, there will be cabinet doors right next to cabinet doors, so would need to create a couple inches of separation with the face frame. I expanded the width of the stereo cubby to 20". My CD carousel is about 18" wide, so I figured that would give a bit of cushion.

I'm not sold on either layout, but I think this one is more workable than the original one I posted.

John

[Larry Frank]

I like the first design best. One other thought is to make certain that you have adequate ventilation for such things as the receiver. You need enough room around it and some air movement. I recently built a desk and had a slide out drawer for the mid sized tower case. I had to go back and put in cabinet cooling fans to prevent overheating. Luckily, my computer automatically slows down the cpu as the temperatures go up and will shut down before damage. I do not think that receivers have the same type of protection.

[sean m. titmas]

I like the 2nd sketch with the asymmetrical layout. the components are square and boxy enough that keeping everything all lined up and even is too much for the eyes.

the last few media units i built i increased the depth about 4" to allow room for the cabling. i use 1/4" ply for the back of the main cabinet and cut out a giant oval, leaving about 4" on the edges and radiused corners, to allow for adequate ventilation. i make the interior shelving unit separate from the main cabinet so that i can slide it out, load it up with components and hook up the cables and than slide it back in. this also allows for the addition of pocket doors which are essential for a media unit.

[Jim Rimmer]

You'll get lots of varying opinions on SMC. Sean likes the 2nd sketch because of the assymetry. I like the first because of the symmetry. I guess I'm a symmetrical kinda guy. :rolleyes:

[John Loftis]

Ok, I did the best I could to draft up the layout with face frames. I think I like #1 better, but I can't figure out what to do with the center cabinet. I guess it would either have to be a vertical drawer (meh) or one of those magnetized cabinet doors that you depress slightly to click it to open.

#2 looks far more typical/traditional to me, which is a pro and a con.

Any additional thoughts?

Never having made cabinets before, I'm struggling to visualize how the doors will seat. I'm also thinking about how wide the face frame trim needs to be, etc.

I made the stiles and rails for the cabinet doors 1.5 inches. No particular reason. They are small doors, so that looked somewhat proportional. Maybe they should be bigger, I dunno. Would like for the wood of the doors not to cover up the electronics.

[sean m. titmas]

the 2nd drawing is my favorite for asymmetrical reasons.

im not sure what your question is regarding the center door on the first drawing and why you would use a vert drawer. please explain.

are you going for face frames with overlay or inset doors?

dont worry about not having made any cabinets before. its easy if you just think of them as 5 sided boxes and im sure you can build a box, right?

[John Loftis]

Great questions. Regarding the type of door, I have some real space constraints in the piece. I'm thinking an overlay door might give a little more room to work with?

For example, two of my components are 18" wide. As Matt pointed out earlier, if I add doors and hinges, will that make it impossible to get the components in the space? Does one type of door/hinge offer advantages in this?

For most TV stand/Entertainment centers, is one particular type of door used? Or is it just an aesthetic choice?

On the center cabinet, I guess I'm just worried about having three swinging doors butting up right next to each other. That's not an informed fear, since I've never tried something like this. It's more of a, "hmmm, am I asking for problems trying to do it this way?"

John

[sean m. titmas]

Great questions. Regarding the type of door, I have some real space constraints in the piece. I'm thinking an overlay door might give a little more room to work with?

For example, two of my components are 18" wide. As Matt pointed out earlier, if I add doors and hinges, will that make it impossible to get the components in the space? Does one type of door/hinge offer advantages in this?

when you are talking about doors and cabinet styles think of it in terms of which style has the least interference with the opening. for example, an 18"i.d. cabinet with a frameless box and overlay door and 95 degree cup hinge will leave you the full 18" to access the cabinet. on the other hand that same cabinet with a face frame will only give you 16" of clearance.





For most TV stand/Entertainment centers, is one particular type of door used? Or is it just an aesthetic choice?

faceframe cabinets versus framless( or euro cabinets) are the two basic choices when it comes to cabinet style choices. faceframes are more traditional wheras frameless is more contemporary and has more hardware options.

On the center cabinet, I guess I'm just worried about having three swinging doors butting up right next to each other. That's not an informed fear, since I've never tried something like this. It's more of a, "hmmm, am I asking for problems trying to do it this way?"

as long as you select the proper hinge and base plate there is no problem with having three doors lined up on a cabinet front

[John Loftis]

Sean, I looked online to make sure I had the terminology right. Not sure why this is so confusing to me. I believe I'm looking for 'inset' doors and drawers.

There will be wood moulding all over the front of piece, which will cover plywood edges, cover nogal side-grain from the cabinet sides, etc. In some cases, the wood moulding will 'hang into space' a bit. It will cover what it needs to cover... and then some (hope that makes sense). I'd lke the cabinets and drawers to be flush with that moulding.

Assuming what I'm saying makes sense, what types of hinges and drawer slides would you recommend? I'd like to be able to fit an 18" wide component in a 19 or 19.5" cabinet without doing major surgery.

Since this thing isn't requiring much hardware, I'm ok with getting good stuff.

Best,
John

[sean m. titmas]

Sean, I looked online to make sure I had the terminology right. Not sure why this is so confusing to me. I believe I'm looking for 'inset' doors and drawers.

There will be wood moulding all over the front of piece, which will cover plywood edges, cover nogal side-grain from the cabinet sides, etc. In some cases, the wood moulding will 'hang into space' a bit. It will cover what it needs to cover... and then some (hope that makes sense). I'd lke the cabinets and drawers to be flush with that moulding.


Assuming what I'm saying makes sense, what types of hinges and drawer slides would you recommend? I'd like to be able to fit an 18" wide component in a 19 or 19.5" cabinet without doing major surgery.

inset doors with a "zero protrusion" hinge will allow full access to the full width of the cabinet interior.

side mount slides require .5" per side and undermounts - 1/4"

Since this thing isn't requiring much hardware, I'm ok with getting good stuff.

Best,
John

Blum makes a nice hinge and Accuride makes good slides.

[Donald Levine]

Here is my advice as someone into home theater. 20" is a good width for the equipment shelves. How deep are you going to make it? This might seem like overkill but make it have an inside dimension of 19.5". I bought a "high end" av stand and it is 19.5" deep. Both my preamplifier and amplifier use all of that depth. You need to plan for your next receiver not this one! All of the cables stick out a few inches as well and if you upgrade the cables they are often bulkier and stiffer.

I am going to bold the next sentence so you know how strongly I feel about it. This goes for anybody making an entertainment center, make sure the back panel is completely removable. I have wired too many cabinets from the front and it is not worth the aggravation. This a purpose built piece of furniture...build it like one. Event if you put giant vent holes make sure the back panel is completely removable. Trust me on this.

When the DirectTv guy or cable person shows up you don't want to have to be climbing inside your gorgeous hand made cabinet from the front. simply slide it out from the wall remove the back panel and swap out that box.

You have a Paradigm center which means you like good gear and you will be upgrading again and not just the center! Try and plan for the future best you can.

Sorry for the rant. I like your latest design the best.

Donald

[Philip Johnson]

I kind of like the look of #2 but wonder if you will have any sound issues with the center speaker off center

[George Davidson]

Hi like your design
I was playing around in my e-cabinet program with your cab.
I took me 1 Hr 1/2
to make your cab with EC and a Cad program I use_ViacAD-6
I have been playing with them for 7 years now :D
I have been desining house for 46 years and have been building custom home for 46 year :eek: My son's build the house now. I have had a cabinet shop for about 35 years now :eek:
They could of had CAD 46 year ago :rolleyes:

[John Loftis]

Wow George, that's a seriously cool result. The last picture looks like a real piece of furniture.

By way of design update...

I've been talked out of using Mahogany and nogal together. I was told that the dark brown of the nogal and the reddish brown of the mahogany probably wouldn't be too complementary. Instead, I'm going to go with maple plywood for the innards, and solid nogal for the rest. I bought a nice piece of birdseye maple and am going to do my first real attempt at inlay. I'm thinking maybe a 1/4 inch wide band on the top. Maybe an inlay band on the center raised panel as well (I'm going with the more boring/linear design).

I'm wrestling to figure out the joinery right now. I got a book on cabinet-making a week ago and have been studying it diligently. Turns out that this thing would be a lot easier if everything but the top was made out of plywood. Having to design something that allows for wood movement is a real challenge for me.

For the bottom joinery, my current plan is to cut a 1/4" deep dado in the bottom rail (and stiles) of the sides panels. Insert plywood bottom into dado loosely, then attach a cleat to the underside. I'm thinking the screws attaching the cleat to the side panels probably need to be slotted... maybe that's overkill, I dunno. Thoughts, folks?

I was also really set on using raised panels with cope and stick joinery for the side panels. But after doing some reading, I'm getting a little worried that that joinery isn't strong enough to hold a piece of furniture together. I saw a taunton video where the cabinetmaker reinforced his cope and stick by adding loose tenons. That seems like an awful lot of trouble. Seems like if you are going to do that, might as well just use mortise and tenon to begin with. Might make it really difficult to rout a profile on the interior side of the stiles and rails, I guess.

I'm also at a loss on the feet. I could extend the stiles of the end panels to the ground, but that by itself would look goofy. Or I could create separate tapered feet from scratch and glue/screw them on. Or I could create the mitered, two-piece feet at each corner (can't remember what those are called). Or I could bring the stiles to the ground as a starting point, then build feet by gluing additional pieces of nogal to that.

Ahh, rookie struggles. This analysis paralysis is killing me. The only solace I've got is that it's been between 104 and 107 degrees this week in Plano, which means my garage is an absolute inferno. I need to find some sort of little cheap A/C unit I can put in there to get the temps down to the 90's. Anybody have something that works moderately well?

John

[Matt Meiser]

Ahh, rookie struggles. This analysis paralysis is killing me. The only solace I've got is that it's been between 104 and 107 degrees this week in Plano, which means my garage is an absolute inferno. I need to find some sort of little cheap A/C unit I can put in there to get the temps down to the 90's. Anybody have something that works moderately well?

Window AC works well for me, though hot here is the 90's. I was down there last summer (in a food manufacturing plant with giant fryers :eek:) I don't know how you guys take the heat.

[John Loftis]

Ok, I'm still struggling a bit. I've glued up the table top and am hoping to do a build write-up as I go along. But I've got to get the design and joinery settled before I start cutting wood in earnest.

Here's where I'd love some help:
1) the feet! I really like my side panels. I just can't figure out how to match that on the face frame and make it look good.

2) face frame- is it ok for the face frame to just be butt-jointed against the side panels? Does that look goofy?

3) drawer fronts- I'm trying to figure out what to do that will look good and proportional.

4) anything else you see that would make it look better

I bought a cope and stick set (bead profile), so my plan is to use that on all doors and on the side panels. I think I figured out how to add edge treatments in sketchup, so I added that detail the best I could. I tried to get the concept of the birdseye maple inlay in the drawing, both on the table top and on the center door.

Thanks in advance for your input. I'm looking forward to sawing wood in earnest ASAP.

Best,
John

[John Loftis]

Here are the frameless pics...

[John Loftis]

I've gotten a ton of valuable offline assistance from a kindly Kentuckian. Here's the updated design. The only remaining issues I'm aware of are (possibly) the drawer fronts and the center panel.

Does the inlay around the drawer fronts look ok? Would something other than a flat panel look better?

Is a raised panel center door too busy? Would a flat panel be better? If flat panel, inlay? Suggestions for inlay templates? I found some really good mission inlay online, wondering if there are other, non-mission resources out there.

I'm going to start the build. Getting excited.

John

[Stephen Musial]

Great questions. Regarding the type of door, I have some real space constraints in the piece. I'm thinking an overlay door might give a little more room to work with?

For example, two of my components are 18" wide. As Matt pointed out earlier, if I add doors and hinges, will that make it impossible to get the components in the space?

John


Are you leaving the back open or closed with holes for ventilation? If it will be closed, not hinge the back panel so you can load everything from the rear? Then you can face frame the front to picture frame the equipment, or put inset doors in for a cleaner look.

[John Loftis]

Steve, I'm going to go frameless. I think it looks better (changing my mind again) and it should give me ample room to front load the components.

Regarding the back, it's not going to be totally open. But there will be gaping ventilation holes and the panel will be removable. Good suggestions.

John

[sean m. titmas]

when building a kitchen i find its quicker to go with frameless boxes because of the speed of not having to build face frames however it lacks the profiles and details that are common with face frame boxes. i wont get into the pros and cons to either method because it would take a gig of space to store the info but i'll share my hybrid approach.

i use a 3/4"x3/4" solid wood edge to the plywood and run a beaded profile and use inset doors. for end panels i run one bead on the inner edge and for interior partitions i use double 3/4" or double 1/2" plywood to end up with 1.5" or 1" frame between the doors and give it room for the beaded profile. this method give the piece a more refined look that is common to face frame cabinets with out having to make up a full face frame.

what approach are you going to use for the fronts?

[Ben Hatcher]

John,
You don't have to leave your components exposed for them to work!

Amazon and others sell remote control extenders that essentially act as repeaters for your remote control signals. You can build the cabinet any way you like, hide your gear behind some doors and still be able to control your gear just like there weren't any doors at all. You just need to put the sensor somewhere on the outside of the box. It picks up all remote signals and relays them to IR lamps that you stick to the pickups on your gear.

Here's the one I bought. I think I paid $60 with free shipping last fall.
http://www.amazon.com/Remote-Control-Booster-System-8225P/dp/B00023JJV6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1248380496&sr=8-2

[John Loftis]

what approach are you going to use for the fronts?

Sean, since the end panels are solid wood, I wasn't planning on adding anything to them. The interior carcass is 3/4 maple plywood. For the center shelves, I was going to use profiled solid maple. For the rest of the edges, I was just going to use maple veneer tape since the only times you'll see those parts is when a drawer or door is open.

I added some rough gray blocks to indicate where I was thinking the hinges would go. Since there will be virtually no separation between the center cabinet and the glass cabinet doors, I'm a little uncertain about whether there are hinges that will still allow the center cabinet to open. So there definitely could be a functional issue remaining.

What do you think?

[sean m. titmas]

Since there will be virtually no separation between the center cabinet and the glass cabinet doors, I'm a little uncertain about whether there are hinges that will still allow the center cabinet to open. So there definitely could be a functional issue remaining.

What do you think?

when it comes to hinges for panel (frameless) construction there are full overlay, partial overlay and inset. what you want for the panel that shares two doors is a "partial overlay" hinge and plate.

[Mike Cruz]

Is it just me or doesn't the center speaker need to be, well, in the center? I like the first one for that reason...audible, it would bother me otherwise...PS, I love good surround sound...wouldn't have it any other way.

Question for you though... since visually, you don't want the center speaker sitting on top of the TV, couldn't you make the unit large enough to surround the TV...more like an entertainment center than a TV stand? That way, you could put the center speaker up high (over the TV, not on it) and free up the bottom of the unit to be assymetrical.

Hate to make you even consider (as if...) starting your drawings from scratch.

[Salem Ganzhorn]

I am not a big fan of the center-channel-in-the-cabinet design (mine is like that now and I am thinking of a re-design). Also 7 1/2" is not very tall for a center.

One thing I have done that I liked was to attach the rear panel with speaker grill connectors: http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=260-367

The one I did was just a plywood frame with 2 layers of speaker cloth. I made the whole thing stand off by 1" so I could pass cables around the back easily.

The speaker cloth actually held more heat/air than I would have expected. Next time I will use a perforated metal instead.

Also, unless you have a use for the extra width I would stick with more standard dimensions (2x or 3x the width of a component).

[sean m. titmas]

Is it just me or doesn't the center speaker need to be, well, in the center? I like the first one for that reason...audible, it would bother me otherwise...PS, I love good surround sound...wouldn't have it any other way.

Question for you though... since visually, you don't want the center speaker sitting on top of the TV, couldn't you make the unit large enough to surround the TV...more like an entertainment center than a TV stand? That way, you could put the center speaker up high (over the TV, not on it) and free up the bottom of the unit to be assymetrical.

Hate to make you even consider (as if...) starting your drawings from scratch.


i imagine that the center speaker should be as close as possible to the center of the listening are and not the cabinet itself.

one of the beauties of digital drawings is that once you have the basic design drawn up its only a matter of a few clicks of the mouse to redraw certain parts.