Construction of a Five-Cell Home Theater Cabinet

[Radmanna]

Hello.

Working on an idea to place a pair of Cornwall III speakers on either side of an 18 foot wall. Centered between the speakers is a fireplace that will not be used. For aesthetics and to maximize floor space usage, I'm planning on having the speakers sit (sideways like a "vertical Cornwall") on top of a pair of pine buffets. Here are the dimensions of each buffet: 36" H x 60" W x 19" D.

In order to increase the WAF, of replacing our tiny home theater (HT) Bose speakers with the Cornwalls, I was thinking of building an audio/visial cabinet that I can set our 52 inch widescreen television on. The cabinet would flushed against the front of the fireplace.

It would need to be low to the ground ... so that the height of the television ... plus the height of the HT cabinet's middle column of (a tri-column cabinet) stays under the fireplace mantle that is 45 inches above the area where the HT cabinet would go. The television is attached to a stand, and considering the size of the television, the footprint of the television is relatively small, so there should be no problem with the television stand being wider than the middle column of a tri-column HT cabinet.

The tri-column cabinet can be as wide as 85 inches.

To further increase the WAF, I would like to use the same pine material that the buffets were made with. The buffets are built like a tank with 1.75 inch slabs of pine, so it would be nice to build a HT cabinet with 1.75" pine. Then I could stain the cabinet to match the pine buffets. But if the 1.75 inch thickness for an HT cabinet would be counter-productive for any efficiency reasons, such reasoning would be very useful to know.

Maximum HT shelving could be possible if I built a tri-column cabinet: The middle column, where the television stand would go, could have just one shelf in order to keep the television below the fireplace mantel. The Left & right columns could have two shelves, as long as the left & right columns remain underneath the left & right edges of the television.

I would rather have a simple design, possibly with a bookshelf quality, and to not use glass encasement of the hi fi equipment. My reason being to allow heat dissipation. Another reason is to have the HT cabinet match a possible construction of a large bookshelf for one of the living room walls, that is made of the same pine material as the buffets and HT cabinet. WAF Strategy: Honey, I'll build you a bookshelf if I can have some Cornwalls ...

I could describe to a carpenter, the dimensions of the HT components that need to be shelved, so that the carpenter has an idea of how wide, high, deep the shelves need to be. But I'm wondering if there are existing "blueprints" that are available that are more explanatory for the carpenter?

Are there websites that give step-by-by procedures, and recommendations to follow, when building HT cabinets?

Along with suggested websites, are there building tips that this forum can provide, when building an HT cabinet that will accommodate your stereo and your HT electronic equipment?

For example, the cabinet I have in mind will have five cells: Two on the left column, One on the middle column, Two on the right column. Each cell would be dedicated to storing one stereo or HT electronic device such as a tuner, pre-amp, DVD player, turntable. I'm assuming that the sizes of the stereo equipment would not fluctuate that much down the road, but I don't know about size fluctuation for DVD players. Maybe have the middle cell the biggest of the five, for the DVD player?

For another example: The cells should be big enough to allow easy access and to make it easy to clean the area, since dust would get into the open-designed cabinet cells.

Your building tips for a five-cell ... three column ... HT cabinet would be appreciated. - Steve

It would also be a big help to know how deep an open-shelved HT cabinet should be. Wouldn't it be useful, for the cells to be deeper than the electronics, as far as keeping dust off of them?

Steve

PS: Click the following for discussion on WAF: < http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/t/136876.aspx >