Wrapping Up the High Fidelity Zone.

All righty!

Got my annual January cold, it's fantastic (not).  Too much time sitting and I'm squirrely.

So you remember I painted up that wall mural, right?

And then after that, I built a swanky shelving unit for our record collection, right, remember?

So the final pieces of the puzzle are built and in and completed.  Woot!  All right all right all right!

Not without some trauma and drama of course, it wouldn't be me otherwise.  

But now you'll get to envision where I was going with that floral-ly wall mural with the rest of the plan.  Ah, see?  I still think it would have worked, and worked well, but so it is.  I'm good either way.

Ok! 

Not long after the shelves went up and were secured to the wall, I hauled the records over and stuffed them in, uh, kinda willy nilly.  I know, that was terribly rude of me as now they're way mixed up and out of Mike order.  Oops.  Thoroughly accidental, I wasn't thinking.

After my unkind move, I asked Mike, "hey babe, how do you wanna organize the records?"  He then proceeded to explain his pending methodology that I, I....hm, I will not be able to assist with so I'mma leave that to him.

Anyway!

The whole original plan, overall, remember, entailed moving the records plus the receiver, the turntable, and the speakers back over by here as everything traveled for a Christmas tree one year and never moved back, so it'd be all one ample, contained, organized, tidy package of musical entertainment record-ness.

And it is.  It's not perfect     .....but what is?  Sigh, shrug, I tried.

Before.  And Finn's toys.

Though I was just close enough with wood, thankfully people returned pieces of that fancy 5/4" red oak and I was lucky enough to stumble across them.  Those, in combination with leftover bits, assembled into the last portion of my scheme.

My cool woodworking friend Scott ripped down another full slab for me, generating more pieces to edge glue (see the shelf assembly post) and a panel door.

See, originally, way back when, this whole project began by measuring the depth of the receiver, see.  That's pretty well how I came up with the depth of the shelves as well as using a record sleeve, obviously.  But the entire project was based on the receiver.

Uh huh.  Foreshadowing.

So my plan was to build a sort of extension of the shelves, a floating cabinet, to hide the receiver, record gack like cords, cleaners, etc. blah blah, and for the turntable and speakers to sit atop.  Solid plan.  Yeah?  I thought so.

Ahead of any further cutting and assembly, I shopped for heavy-duty brackets and bought two sets of these* in ten by six.

Once ordered, I edge glued up two full four foot long boards of the red oak with the two inch strips Scott made for me, exactly as I had for the shelves.  Once those were set, I quadruple measured the space and trimmed those down accordingly.

Up went three brackets onto the wall, careful to subtract the inch of the 5/4 wood of the top while attempting to align said top with a shelf.  Into the studs I should mention, for added strength and security.  That of course resulted in a weird placement because who the hell knows how the hell our walls were framed out.

Trying quite hard here to align the top with a shelf.

My handy level strikes again.

Ok.

Back downstairs, I had to reverse engineer my design in order to build it.

Floating cabinet beginnings.

I assembled the top first for ease of installation purposes, allowing me to set the top down on the brackets and screw in from below.  I opted not to thoroughly enclose the cabinet so air could move freely around the receiver while on.  That and I didn't have enough wood, hahaha.

After staining to match the shelves, here I've attached the top to the brackets from below.

Back downstairs again, I attached the (unstained, design choice) door panel to the bottom cabinet piece with a piano hinge* so it would flop open down.

As you can see, that flip drive bit* was super handy here.  And yes, I had to trim the piano hinge which I accomplished with my grinder,* easy peasy.

Ok!  A few pilot holes, a few pilot screws, and it was time to add the bottom to the top!

This...this happened so easily, I was utterly agog.  I literally had to step back and stare a minute, how did I get this up, aligned, and clamped with zero issues?!  Anyway, push the screws in from below, done.

Wow.  Shocking.  I was going to get this done before Mike came home from work!!

Next were holes which didn't go according to plan but I ended up with a better solution.  With a hole saw* and irked shoulders, I zipped a hole through the top for the turntable plug and the speaker wires but nope, no on the speaker wires, too burly, so I drilled small holes behind the speakers to run those wires through.  I love me hidden wires, what can I say?!

Holes!  Speaker wire attempt #1 at top, speaker wire dilemma resolved at bottom.

Time to move the receiver over, omg people, I'm, I'm almost done with this project holy sh*t!!  That's when the nightmare happened:

The receiver doesn't fit.

I didn't know that the, that the Marantz* people didn't intend for their power plug to be smartly, space-savingly designed.  No.  It stupidly sticks three inches of additional distance straight out the back.  Straight out.  Straight.  Mother f..........  Gimme a break, jeez louise!  Who...?  Why?!  Why.  Why.

My whole plan....my whole project.....a plug!  A stupid freakin' plug.  Hands in the air, I'm out.

Mike came home.  Witnessed the monstrous fail.  Said babe, just do half a door.  So that's what I did. Ugh, I could not believe it.  Seriously?  Why....ugh, .......I'm still disturbed.  L shaped plug, people, L shaped plug.

Time to cut the door in half.  Ugh.

Disassembled the bottom off the top (glad I didn't glue!!), took the door panel off, took the piano hinge off, cut the door, cut the hinge, put the hinge back on, door panel back on, put the bottom back on.  With the receiver flailing out in the wind.

By the way, I tried using various catches, some push-to-release catches to hold the door closed, none worked.  There's a regular magnetic one* in there now and it, eh, is fine enough.

So yeah.  Totally not how I wanted this to turn out in the end.  Somehow the top didn't align even though it did but now it doesn't....ugh.  It's not disastrous.  Maybe?  Yeah?  It works.  Right?  Mike is happy.  Everything is in one spot, mostly stylish-ly, and it functions.

Heh.  Sigh....Hey, it's better than it was, let's go with that.

Now to work out illumination and some dressing to round it all out.

So close and yet, so far.  That shim was temporary and I forgot to take it out for the photo.  Nice.  eyeroll.... That donkey toy is laughing at me.

Now's your chance to imagine that floral wall mural behind.  Yep, gotta deal with that power strip cord too.  I'm never really done ever, am I.........

To see the complete and total redesign of this lil' area, haha, click here!

*The heavy-duty solid stainless steel shelf brackets, piano hinges, flip drive bits, angle grinders, hole saws, magnetic catches, and Marantz receivers are Amazon affiliate links.  Mwah, thanks!  Please see the boring stuff tab for more info.