Entertainment Center w/ Album Drawers

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Well done Julie!

[Julie Moriarty]

Thank you, guys! This pretty much took up all my focus for two months. When wake up in the morning now, I have to remind myself it's time to switch gears and focus on the next project. You have to know when it's time to let go.

[Bill McNiel]

Not too shabby for a "non-woodworker" ;-) Julie, someday you are going have to own up to your skill set, not only as a woodworker but as a designer.
Unique and well executed solution - Bill

[Julie Moriarty]

Not too shabby for a "non-woodworker" ;-) Julie, someday you are going have to own up to your skill set, not only as a woodworker but as a designer.
Unique and well executed solution - Bill

You made me blush, Bill.... But thank you. That means the world to me.

[Julie Moriarty]

Next up is to make the slide out base for the stereo equipment - a receiver and DVD player. I'm just going to stack them but I want to be able to slide them out to make connections easier.

I chose a piece of walnut veneer plywood that I acquired so long ago I don't even remember where I got it and wrapped it with the pecky walnut.

I ripped the walnut edging to a depth that hides the slides. The slides are longer than the base to enable the equipment to pull out sufficiently past the face of the cabinet to allow for easier connections.

I cut in biscuits and glued up the pieces.


And put a few coats of GF High Performance poly on it


Today I'll install it and see how it works. This has been three years in the waiting.

[Julie Moriarty]

Saturday I installed the slides and the pull out platform. The slides are designed to be side mounted but I needed every bit of the opening for the equipment.


When it was pulled out it couldn't support much weight so I made temporary support legs. I placed the DVD player on first. The receiver needs 8" of breathing room above it so it has to go on top. And since it has a larger footprint I had to make up a platform out of 1/2" plywood, which I painted black. After I placed the DVD player on, I remembered I needed to connect the digital audio cable to it. So I leaned over, placing my hand on top, and down it came! The temporary legs slid right out. The slides were destroyed.

Bad plan.

So I took a piece of 1/4" HDMW and secured it to the bottom of the cabinet with turner's tape. I didn't want to screw it down because that could create some drag points. Then I placed the walnut platform on it and checked to see if I could rotate it inside the cabinet. Next went the DVD player, the plywood and the receiver.


For the first time since we moved here (8/15) we've got real home theater sound.

Took long enough!

[Greg Parrish]

Looks great. And nice Pioneer Elite components. Thumbs up.

[Julie Moriarty]

Thanks, Greg. Had a worrisome moment with that old equipment. I couldn't get any sound out of the front or rear speakers. The speakers are Bose Acoustimass and connect from the receiver to the bass unit with a printer cable kind of jack. When you wiggle it the bass pops. So I thought the problem was in the connector. A few years ago the Bose didn't work at all. I took it apart and followed some online instructions and got it working again. Then I hook it up now and only the front side speakers work. I was pretty bummed.

I took out the instructions, studied them carefully (it's 92 pages) and all day yesterday tried this and that to get them to work. No luck.

This morning I'm going through them again and I see I had "STEREO" instead of "THX" selected. I switch to "THX" and guess what?