A Matter of Records

Good Enough

I remember back when I was originally looking for a tv console. About a year after moving into my house I was still using a coffee table as my media console. But it’d gotten quite crowded with the soundbar, Record Player, Blu-ray Player and all their associated wires. In my mind I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted. A kind-of mid century modern design with space on top for the record player, a space below that for the soundbar, and some storage for the other media, including some records that I owned. I drove from furniture store to furniture store all across Oklahoma City, trying to find anything that would fit what I had in my mind, to no avail. Oddly enough though I found something at Walmart that was “Good Enough”. I brought that home and was moderately happy with it all in all. It looked good despite the doors being a bit off kilter and troublesome to open. But it fit most everything except for the records which I already had a small box to the side for anyways.

My Propensities

I have a strong tendency to try and fix the things around me. To try and improve them or rebuild them to something that I can approve of. I tend to try and find something that is mostly what I would like, then modify it or augment it to be perfectly suited to my tastes. Doing this with furniture is something I tend to regularly do. Like building an entirely new wood top for my office desk. Or building an Iron Pipe book shelf (NEVER AGAIN). I actually managed to stick with the record cabinet as it was for a VERY long time, much longer than I would have expected considering how integral it is to my everyday life as a media center. But everything comes to a head and the triggering factor for me is that I like to read. Over the years I’ve found one of the perfect companions to reading are vinyl records. They offer a solid 30m of music per side, with mostly consistent themes and styles. Plus they force you to stand every so often to go flip the record around, ensuring that you don’t spend too much time sitting in a singular position. Because of this, over the years I’d acquired enough records to the point where they were overflowing the small box that I had for them. I was then presented with the troublesome issue of what to do. I could get a second box or try to buy a dedicated record cabinet for that. But none of that made much sense to me, it frustrated me that I had a perfectly good cabinet next to it that was being underutilized because it didn’t fit my needs. Another reason I didn’t like just buying another box is due to a small rule I have regarding furniture. I grew up in a house with wood floors, and was constantly tasked with regularly sweeping and mopping my room. And I’ve always found furniture that sits directly on the ground to be incredibly annoying to clean under and around. It traps dust and you just spend extra time trying to move it out of the way to get to where you need to clean. So I have a rule that most/all the furniture in my house should either be trivial to move, or be lifted off the ground in such a way that you can get under it to clean.

The Plan

The idea came to me partially when I was originally assembling the media center a few years back. It turns out that the metal frame is embedded and screwed to a particleboard cabinet and shelf. I held up a record to the front of the cabinet and realized that if I just made the cabinet a little taller. I would have space for both the soundbar AND to store records in the cabinet. I immediately started measuring out a plan/diagram for the new cabinet. Only to be extremely confused. The cabinet clearly wasn’t in inches since it didn’t match any inch measurements exactly. But it didn’t match any reasonable centimeter measurements either… I stared at it for a moment before realizing what must have happened. I suspect that when the cabinet was originally designed, it was done in Customary units. But when sent over to the factory in whatever Asian country it was made, the company that built it operates entirely in Metric units. So they converted everything to get as close as they could to the design requirements while also using their preferred unit of measure. This leads to oddities like the use of 2cm square tubing as “1in” tubing and overall dimensions of 115cm (~45in) in length and 48cm (~19in) depth. Both for my own sanity and to keep to the theme of the original piece. I did the same. I used Customary units for general direction in size, and then converted to Metric for final dimensions.

Slotting Slats

One of the primary questions regarding how I was going to build it were the doors. I knew I wanted a way to hide the record sections to both make the cabinet not have large open sections, as well as to protect the records themselves. But I wasn’t entirely interested in a solid wood door either. Taking some cues from other mid-centrury modern furniture I settled on a slatted construction for the doors. After watching a couple woodworking videos on the topic I happened across a great video by Foureyes Furniture that had a straightforward and easy tutorial on how to do sliding doors. From there I used my handsaw to rip down wood to the 1/2”x3/4” width I needed. Then I used the router with a rounding attachment to create the rounded fronts of the boards, and cut out the edge slots to attach the boards to an outer frame of wood. Once all the prep work was done, I used a throwaway piece as a separator as I glued and pin-nailed the pieces together. The final doors took a bit of sanding to fit perfectly but they slide beautifully and look fantastic.

A Solid Shelf

The first major part of the cabinet that I built was the wooden top-shelf. I didn’t REALLY have to do this part, but I wanted the top shelf to match the cabinet I was making and it would give me some experience with the tools and techniques I needed for the main cabinet. I got a 3/4 thick joined wood section and cut it down to the inner size of the shelf. Then I cut down 1.5”^2 lengths of wood to match the 1.5”x1” size I needed. I used dowels to secure the sides and front to the main body and glued it all together. When I went to test it, it fit nearly perfectly/snugly. With ONE issue. I had done my measurements assuming I was using 1/2” thick board instead of 3/4” board. So I ripped some extra boards and glued an extra 1/4” lip to the bottom of the boards matching the grain. After sanding and staining, it’s incredibly hard to notice that the top shelf has the extra lip bit added to the bottom unless you know to look for it.

Cavernous Spaces

The base of the Cabinet consists of two 3/4” thick sections of joined wood I got from Lowe’s that I cut to size, then glued together. This was a horrible mistake. If you’re going to do this I highly recommending joining the boards together first. THEN AND ONLY THEN, cutting them to size after. I had some miss-alignment and rotation that I ended up having to use a hand-plane to correct and smooth out with a sander. The Main space are two compartments to either side that are 13” square. I did some testing and settled on this being the ideal size if I ever wanted to add sliding boxes to fit inside, but even with the records resting free inside, it’s perfect. For the center of the console, I knew I wanted to Display a selection of my favorite Blu-rays, hide extra cables, and make managing those cables easier. So in the back wall I drilled out two oval holes that allow cables to get in/out either above or below an adjustable shelf. I also added a unique feature of a removable back-stop for the Blu-rays which serves a dual purpose. It gives a place for the Blu-rays to rest against, and it also hides the bottom back of the shelf where I have the power strip and power cables for all the devices. By far the most stressful and hectic part of the job was doing the final glue-up and hammering it all into place. I’m not a professional furniture maker by any stretch… I’m not even a hobbyist furniture maker. I tend to make things as I need to and this was the first time I’ve attempted to assemble a wood cabinet of this complexity. I knew it was going to be an issue so I went out and bought 4 extra clamps and even some extremely large parallel clamps to run the entire length of the piece. It took me about an hour or two of frantic work, which by the end of it, I was drenched in sweat from just the stress. Because some of the dowels weren’t perfectly aligned I ended up knocking out some bits of wood in chunks with the rubber mallet. But once I was I was finished I took a chisel, carved out the dowels that were sticking out and glued the ejected pieces of wood back into place. And you can’t even tell that they were ever ejected in the first place.

Finishing Touches

My biggest mistake in the project is not spending enough time sanding. I am not a fan of sanding as it takes forever and the dust gets EVERYWHERE. But I really should have spent more time making sure to sand away the stray bits of glue from the outside and inside edges. Once applying the stain the dribbles of glue ended up being quite noticeable. Not enough to be a major issue, but noticeable. As for the stain itself? I went with one of my favorite stain colors “Mission Oak” which gives the wood a very warm almost golden glow. Which I applied using a cloth wiping method instead of trying to brush it on then wipe it off after. ## Final Assembly Once I got all the parts and pieces finished individually all that was left was Final Assembly, I used almost all the same screws that the cabinet originally came with to screw into the boards. And the end result is a TV console I plan to cherish for the rest of my life.