Furniture Plans: Custom Entertainment Center for Flat Screen TV

Introduction

In March of 2011, we began our first large woodworking adventure. We decided to dump our gigantic eye-sore tube TV for a new LED LCD flatscreen TV. This large purchase introduced some problems, for example, how could we afford spending more money on an entertainment center. Our family room has large vaulted ceilings and a big blank wall. I just did not like how the puny TV stands look on our gigantic wall. And with three crazy kids, I wanted the TV out of harms way.  My husband mentioned that he could build me an entertainment center. So we went and looked at entertainment centers I was interested in and they were $2,500 or more. Yeah right!  So we made up our minds. We were going to build our own entertainment center for a fraction of the cost. I looked up entertainment centers online and took bits and pieces of each one. I knew I wanted the TV higher up than most entertainment centers to keep those tiny little hands from reaching my expensive TV. I also wanted the satellite receivers and DVD player out of reach and up on the top center piece. We looked up the exact dimensions for our TV and based our opening size on the TV size. We left about 3" of gap on all sides. The best part of the whole project was adding up the receipts at the end of the project and seeing how much we saved. In total we spent $546. Not bad considering the $2,500+ price tag on similar entertainment centers!

Looking back, I can’t believe we actually built this with the tools we had at the time. Since then, we have inherited a lot of high quality tools from TJ’s mom, but we definitely took the hard route. We actually only had a cheap circular saw, table saw (borrowed from my mom), and miter saw. We borrowed the nail compressor and nail guns from a neighbor, a broken jig saw from a neighbor and a router from a co-worker.

We posted our project on ana-white's brag website and were shocked at the positive response. Many people requested the plans, but we didn't have any plans. We just had a hand drawn piece of paper with notes and dimensions. This inspired us to start a website and post some of our projects with plans so others could enjoy these projects too and hopefully prevent some of our "lessons learned."  Below are some of the other entertainment centers that have been built, based off of our entertainment center.  They are beautiful!

• Entertainment Center by Dave-Mac 
• Entertainment Center by azca33
• The Entertainment Center by a.mcdaniel

Estimated Cost: $550-$800*

*Depends on the grade of wood you buy. #2 and better whitewood (AKA pine) is cheapest, then select pine, then poplar. (I would recommend select pine or poplar for the face frame pieces and maybe the drawer and door fronts—these are highly visible and take a little bit of abuse.) Ours cost $545, but I have updated the prices and they have gone up by about 10%.


Dimensions:

The overall size of the project is 94 1/2" wide by 83 5/8" tall.

Tools

• Table saw
• Miter saw
• Jig saw
• Orbital sander
• Pneumatic nail guns
• Air compressor
• Circular saw
• Drill with bits
• Kreg Jig * 

*Recommended, but you could join the face frame through other methods (in our case, we didn’t have a Kreg Jig at the time, so we just nailed the face frame directly to the box…looking back we would’ve done this differently).


Lumber and Materials

Click the link here to view and download the Excel file.

Furniture Plans: Built-in Entertainment Center/Media Hutch

Introduction

In March of 2012, one of my neighbors approached me about building an entertainment center as a surprise gift for her husband’s birthday. She had seen our entertainment center and wanted one built with a similar look. They had a niche in their basement family room and she wanted a custom entertainment center to fit the exact dimensions. It was a unique size and required close planning. The tricky part of it was that she wanted it to look almost built-in, but have the flexibility of moving it in the future if they were to move. She also wanted the space for the TV to be as big as possible.

We put together several design options and presented them to her. She wanted a lot of similarities to our entertainment center, but with some notable differences such as a shelf in the center top cubby, beadboard in the back center, drawers in the middle and doors on the outside, a different color and different hardware. We went to work pricing the materials and taking the lessons learned from our entertainment center and applying them to this project. Since we had a lot of the tools we didn't have during the build of our entertainment center, the project went extremely smooth. It was a lot of fun building the project and knowing our friends have a perfect entertainment center for their taste and space.

Estimated Material Cost

$440*

*Depends on the grade of wood you buy. #2 and better whitewood (AKA pipe) is cheapest, then select pine, then poplar. (I would recommend select pine or poplar for the face frame pieces and maybe the drawer and door fronts—these are highly visible and take a little bit of abuse.)

Dimensions

The overall dimensions of the project were 45 3/4 inches wide by 77 3/8 inches tall by 19 1/4 inches deep. These dimensions could be easily modified to fit your individual space.

Entertainment Center Front Dimensions

Perspective Full Dimensions

Tools

• Table saw
• Miter saw
• Jig saw
• Orbital sander
• Pneumatic nail guns
• Air compressor
• Circular saw
• Drill with bits
• Kreg Jig*

*Recommended, but you could join the face frame through other methods (nailed the face frame directly to the box)

Lumber and Material

• ¾” x 4’ x 8’ birch plywood sheets for complete structure (3) @ $45 = $135
• 1” x 2” x 8’ select pine for face frame (5) @ $4 = $20
• 1” x 6” x 8’ select pine for bottom piece and arches (1) @ $15 = $15
• (1) 8’ piece of crown molding @ $12 = $12
• (1) 8’ piece of 3 ¼” base board @ $12 = $12
• (3) Drawer slides @ $6 each = $18
• (2) Door fronts ¾” x 9” wide x 26” tall (1” x 10” x 8’ select pine) @ $25 = $25
• (3) Drawer fronts ¾” x 9” tall x 24” wide (1 x 10 x 4 select pine w/ left over from door fronts) @ $12 = $12
• (1) Beadboard 4’ x 8’ @ $20 = $20
• Drawers (1) 1/2” x 4’ x 8’ MDF sheet @ $28 = $28 (if needed – maybe use left over plywood)
• (4) Hinges @ $2 - $4 each = $16
• (8) door/drawer pulls @ $3 - $4 each = $32
• Consumables (wood filler, screws, nails, glue, adhesive, sandpaper, saw blades, etc.) = $20
• Primer, paint, glaze, paint brushes, etc. = $40

Subtotal = $405
Tax @ 6.85% = $28
Estimated Total = $433

Woodworking Tip: Paint Wood Pieces before Assembling the Furniture

Oftentimes if you are assembling a large or complex piece of furniture; it is easiest to paint the wood before it is completely assembled. When we built the entertainment project, we assembled some of the large pieces and primed and painted it before we put on the back panels, face frames, crown, baseboard and doors and hardware. We had easier access to tight areas by painting the wood first. We were also able to paint an even coat. Obviously the paint is going to get dinged up a little during the assembly, so you’ll have to go back over it and touch it up or put a final coat on it, but it is much easier to touch it up then to put two or three coats on it in tight spaces. If you are painting a small or less complex project, then save the painting until the end and do it all at once.