Chopping Down an Entertainment Center

I’m taking a break from my usual geek content for a woodworking project. Granted, it’s a woodworking project to contain geek stuff, though.

We purchased a nice solid oak entertainment center many years ago. But it’s worthless now in an age of widescreen TVs. I tried to sell it, and then later give it away, with no takers. It had been taking up way too much room in the garage for more than a year.

Before: The original entertainment center.

Before: the original entertainment center.

So rather than turn it into a pile of lumber, I decided to chop it down and make it useful again. I had to remove the trim, cut off the sides, lower the top, and put it back together. Then I added a drawer on the right to hold DVDs, drilled shelf bracket holes in the closed cabinet to move the big shelf down, and added new hardware to freshen the look. I also had to disassemble the large door, learn to cut glass, then put that back together into a smaller door.

Making the drawer front was probably the hardest part. A friend let me borrow his raised panel bit for my shaper. That huge bit turning at 10,000 rpm was one of the most frightening things I’ve ever seen. :-)

Here’s the finished results loaded up with geeky stuff.

After: Modified entertainment center.

After: Modified entertainment center.

10/18/2009 | Comments

Categories: Woodworking

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4 Responses to “Chopping Down an Entertainment Center”

  1. Posted by: Shelli Genn - 10/18/2009

    WOW! Looks great – that’s what we need to do with our big thing. Tho for now it is holding our TV – no widescreen yet – and all the dc’s etc on the side pull out door.
    Interesting – and very creative. Great job Doug!! Now that you know how to do this you may have a new career coming up.

  2. Posted by: Dale Smith - 10/20/2009

    Show off!
    Don’t tell Summer about it or I’ll have yet another project on the list of things I should do but don’t.

  3. Posted by: Andy - 11/12/2009

    NICE! This is what I’m going to do with our oak entertainment center. Do you have any tips?

  4. Posted by: Doug Smith - 11/12/2009

    @Andy, The best tip is the usual tip: measure twice, cut once.

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