How To Make A Wall Mounted Entertainment Center

Today we are back in the bedroom and I think I have just that thing to solve not only my problem but possibly yours. So if you have a TV then you might have things that need to be plugged into it and you might need somewhere to put those things. Hmm the big question is will this work for you? If you're into this kind of thing then you might like the touch of oak for the doors and also the sleek pull handles. How about maximizing the space within each opening? Having pull-out shelves truly take advantage of the limited space. If you have a lot of devices then you might just like this feature having a charging station built right in and I'm not going to leave you in the past with the old charging station. This also have his and hers built-in wireless charging. For me this solves a lot of issues. If you want to add a surround sound receiver as well then that's not a problem just simply remove one of the shelves and then you can install it here and with all of that you should still have enough room for your modem and your wireless router. Which brings me to today's sponsor ExpressVPN. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and in a nutshell the main purpose of this is privacy. I'll touch more on this later on in the video but I'm sure you want to see how this thing is made and how it came together. So let's do it. Now to get started I'm gonna take a sheet of three-quarter inch plywood then I'm gonna rip that down to manageable pieces so I can fine-tune those on the table saw. When I'm cutting down sheets of plywood and of course when I remember I like to add support on the back side of the plywood so when I cut and pass it doesn't fall. And at this point I have the plywood ushered up to its final width and now it's time to make a cross cut and I'm going to use the DIY circular saw guide. To make the French cleat support I'm going to set the blade to four to five degrees and then rip those on a table saw. The doors were made from 1x10 oak which I then trimmed down to size and at this point I have everything cut down to its final dimensions which is probably a good time to go ahead and sand it all down and this will make life a lot easier especially when I have tight areas to get to. I'll do one final sanding once it's all assembled. So now I'm going to shift the attention to cutting out a section on the back side of the drawers and this cutout is all about cable management and this area is where I envision all the iPads to come when they need a charge. And the other drawer will look identical but on the back side of it it has a smaller cutout. At this point I'll start the assembly of the cabinet. There are a number of ways that you can join the bottom to the side. For this case I'm going to use dowels and although these are a quick solution they can be a pain to get things lined up but using the dowel jigs usually make this a whole lot smoother and after attaching the first side I'll do the same thing on the opposite side. I was a bit conservative on the overall depth of the media center so I wanted to maximize every square inch on the inside and in results of that I used a half inch piece of plywood on the back side of the cabinet. This not only gives me a little extra room on the inside but it also makes it lighter. I installed the back using pocket hole screws and this worked out really well. I wrapped the pullout shelves with one by two pine. This added support to the side for the drawer slides and also covered the plywood layers. To speed up this process I used the brad nails to hold the trim on while the glue set up. These door hinge was a tough find and besides that they didn't come with the instructions. With that in mind I figured installing them in a closed position would have got me close enough. They are spring loaded and they can work really well with heavy doors. Next it was on to installing the middle support. These were doubled up. The first side was installed with pocket hole screws and after double checking and squaring I then installed the second side with glue just to cover up the pocket holes. In order to have the best clearance for the devices under the shelves I decided to trim the front down by creating an arch which I then used a router with a flush cut bit to trim off the excess. I like to install the drawer slides, the hinges, and all the hardware during the assembly stage. This way I can address anything that needs to be addressed. Since the drawer slides are a bit thicker than the thickness of the shelves I lined up the top of the shelves to the top of the drawer slides. To make this quick and simple I used some scrap pieces of wood and that worked out very well. These handles were a really good find and I think they fit the design really well. I linked them down in the video description if you want to check those out. You can totally install these without routing them but I felt like it was so much cleaner if I could just route these in. They were a little more work but I think they were totally worth it. With the handles being completely routed I can now use a self-centering bit to drill the holes and now I'm going to route in not one but two wireless chargers for his and hers. At the end of the day these are electronic devices and they can totally fail so I'm not going to play it safe and just route in just the exact hole I need. I'm going to go with five inches and this should cover just about all of them. One of the hardest things for me during the build is picking the right color. I know where it's going but I don't know if it's going to sit in the existing design. Visually I can see it in my head but you just don't know in reality and I've done just about everything I can do with the top off so it's time to add the top and move on. I apply wood glue along the edge and then set the top in place and with the top down I'm going to add a few brad nails along the side and secure the back on using pocket hole screws. The plan is to mount this to the wall using a french cleat system so when you install the french cleat you definitely want to make sure that your miter end is facing the right direction and to make this even stronger I'm going to use wood glue and also pocket hole screws to hold all of this together. As we get closer to that finishing stage I need to make sure that I prep this thing and get it as good as possible. I'm going to use bondo to fill in all the gaps and also all the nail holes. After the bondo dries I'm going to sand it down as smooth as possible then I'll come back and prime it and paint it. I used vinyl in a few of my latest builds and this is actually my third time at it. Personally I like the vinyl and I don't think it's something you want to use everywhere and I really want to use it in selective places but in this case I really like the texture in this one and for my entertainment center I thought it would be a nice touch. Initially my plan was to paint this cabinet and be done with it and truthfully I may just go back to the white paint and call it a day. I really like the look of the vinyl and this is something that I already had on hand. I did check online and I couldn't find anything longer than this and although I'm going to finish it in vinyl the seams is definitely a deal breaker for me so I know at heart I'm going to have to go back and redo this section of it. So I'm going to use this as a learning experience to continue to get better. I ended up drilling a pass-through hole so I can pass cables from one side to the other. Next I needed to address the end cabinet power and instead of using just a regular outlet I'm just going to use a power strip, take it apart, rewire it and then wire that directly to a local outlet. I'm breezing over this because I don't want you to try to set home if you're not experienced. If you are you'll know what to do. Anytime I mount something to the wall my go-to move is to add tape. Once I do that I can mark all over that tape and remove it. I'll get started by placing the location of where the French cleat needs to line up to. Next I'll stretch out an additional piece of tape and on this tape I'm going to mark the location of the studs. Another thing to keep in mind is the direction of the French cleat. You want to make sure that the cabinet can grab onto this once you mount it to the wall. I figured I'd point this out because I caught myself drilling these in the wrong direction. The line I previously marked will be the reference line that I can mark the bottom of the French cleat which should keep the entertainment center about four inches below the bottom of the TV panel. I want this to be pretty strong so I'm going to install a couple screws in each stud location. I'll then stretch out a few more pieces of tape so I can mark the location of the studs above and below the cabinet. Now I need to remove the entire wall panel starting with the TV. Now this is where the French cleat show its worth. After attaching it to the wall I now know where to drill the hole for the power cable and the additional cables that's going to be passing through. The best way to take care of all your visible TV wires is fishing them through the wall. The next thing I need to do is solder and extend the LED harness. The goal here is to tie this strip into the existing one that's going around the TV panel. Before mounting this I need to make sure I strap the wire out of the way so it doesn't get caught up so I'm going to staple this down. If you don't have a stapler you can use masking tape that should temporarily hold it at least for the time being. If you're taking notes there's a few things you may want to pass through. One is definitely your power cable. Two if you have LEDs passing through. Three your HDMI or source maybe audio source and any other kind of source you need to come from the TV down to your entertainment center. Whenever it's possible try to keep your low voltage cables away from your high voltage cables and this should help with interference. Since I have the electrical box behind the TV panel from the previous project I will keep it simple and tie the power strip into it. All I have to do is use double-sided tape and that should hold this in place. At this point the shelf is just sitting on the french cleat. To truly lock it into place I'm going to use those tape I have above and below to find the stud and drive this right into the wall. When I mount large objects to the wall I like to give it a quick test and see how well it holds up. So the good thing is it didn't even flinch and I know the question is gonna come is how much can this hold? Truth is I don't know I'm 179 and it didn't flinch. The TV panel is back on the wall so if you want to check that out and see how it's made there is a video for it and I do cover all the electrical work that happened in that video. To finalize this I now need to install all the hardware put the drawers back add the cover and the gadgets. To install the wireless charger I modified this corner bracket turn it into something like this and that seems to do the trick. I tried out a number of wireless chargers and this one seems to work the best. Wireless charging is great until you can't find where that device is underneath the surface and these two white dots is paper from a hole punch. I'm going to use these as my indicator and the plan is to glue those on top of the entertainment center and being that they're white they should blend right in. I had a few designs for this TV panel setup but looking back at it I think this is the right one. Big thank you to ExpressVPN for supporting today's show and their efforts in keeping our data safe. So how does this work? When you use a VPN your public IP address is masked so even the website you visit won't be able to identify you. Without a VPN your internet browsing data can be accessed by your internet service provider, your cell phone provider, ad companies, and worst case hackers. I don't really leave the country but I do travel from time to time and when I do I connect to public networks and that my friends is why I love ExpressVPN and the security it provides me so I don't have to worry about other people trying to get into my personal stuff. Now this may sound complicated but you don't have to be an expert to protect your stuff it's just as easy as one click. Protecting your privacy is always a personal decision but just in case there are options. To find out more visit expressvpn.com slash DIY creators or click on the link down in the video description. You can sign up to get three free months with a one-year package and after that it's less than seven dollars a month with a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can find links to all the things used in this build down in the video description and this is what was used to charge all the devices in a charging area. Now this is a design that's built around my needs but you may want something a little bit different but you can take this same design alter it and now make it your own. So if you'd like to build plans for these they'll be available in a few days or if you're a supporter on Patreon then you'll have the free Sketchup file there. And that is it for this one if you guys are new here be sure to subscribe to the channel and also turn on your bell notification so that you get notified when I post another video.