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Pictures! Just finished wall unit/fireplace, uhhh, almost finished...

Pictures! Just finished wall unit/fireplace, uhhh, almost finished...


  #1  
Old 12-01-03, 02:18 PM
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Pictures! Just finished wall unit/fireplace, uhhh, almost finished...

Below is a link to some photos of the wall unit/fireplace that I built, or shall I say, almost built. I still have to build the raised panel cabinet doors for the bottom 2 niches on each side, TV and speaker niches. These doors and TV frame will be hickory to match all other cabinets in my home.

The small niches above the components and rt side storage are for the speakers and will receive hickory framed speaker cloth. I have a surround system with 6 speakers, however since they are Bose and very small, I just put the center channel speaker on the shelf above the TV. I preferred this method rather than implementing another speaker into the built in design since the speaker is small and almost unnoticeable. While in the design phase, I could not make the additional built in speaker work to my satisfaction without really taking away form space and architecture. At the same time, I did not want to see all three speakers up front and easily incorporated the sides into the design as I will also have speaker cloth on each side of the TV, with the center raised panel door allowing access to the front jacks of the TV, for quick hookups of cameras, etc.

The process was a bit testing as to keep cats safe, and dust out of the rest of the house, I had the temporary wall up for three months on the button and had all furniture strewed throughout the rest of the house, therefore had no living space. This however did not matter much as I was in the room every weekend and after work late into the night almost every night.

The fireplace existed already as you will see by the before picture, however I had to rip out the old and move it and chimney about 20 inches to accommodate my design.

Without getting lengthy, I had utilized this board on quite a few occasions where I had questions on how to proceed, so I wanted to post the final, or almost final result. I will post again once I get the doors on…

Thank you for your help.

http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bpt...l+Unit&.src=ph
 
  #2  
Old 12-01-03, 02:21 PM
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for some reason it takes a moment to load, so hang on...
 
  #3  
Old 12-01-03, 04:31 PM
D
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That's great results, thank you for posting that. The before and after really show the difference.
 
  #4  
Old 12-02-03, 09:43 AM
A
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Fantastic work.

What's interesting is that the room does not look smaller even though I imagine you lost about a foot. In fact in almost looks larger in the picture.

How deep is the builtin shelving?
 
  #5  
Old 12-02-03, 11:29 AM
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Thanks. I think part of the issue was the room was awkward to begin with and I never liked the fireplace. My TV took up a bit of space anyway and the area to the sides of the TV was just worthless. So, even though there was extra squre footage, it never realy took on that appearance.

I knew as soon as purchased the home I had to build an entertainment center in there. I woodwork as a hobby and planned on building a Hickory unit, though as of late changed my mind as that would be an abundance of wood and I could not come up with a design I was happy with. I have seen homes with the drywall built in units and thought I could capitalize on the concept by incorporating some wood into the unit in the form of cabinets to assist in pulling everything together. So now, I am planning on putting raised panel doors over the components, and a frame/speaker cloth/raised panel over the TV giving a built in appearance, and framed speaker cloth over the left and right speaker niches (though uncertain I will follow through on the speakers just yet).

The living room was about 18ft wide by 22 ft deep, so it was already quite deep. In addition, the kitchen is in the same area, so realistically the room is well over 35ft deep. I don’t know that I could have gotten away with this unit unless I had this type of depth since the unit is so large and the upper niches so high. I have an island that separates the two rooms. So, now the living area is about 18 feet deep and more if you were to add a few feet to the Island. We also have a separate family room, so this acts as our day in and day out living room

The unit is 25 inches deep on the sides and 33 inches deep in the center. I had to allow 4 additional inches of depth for the TV so that I could build the face/frame giving it a built in look. So, in fact I lost close to three feet in the center and a couple on the sides as far as the room size is concerned.

Another issue was that though I knew I had to obtain a certain depth for the TV, I did not want the unit to be flat and was not thrilled about eating up a 3ft chunk of the entire room which is why I built the center deeper than the sides. I felt that with the final design, I would add a bit of aesthetic value to the unit/room, at the same time giving the appearance of more space. It took me a while to come up with this design as I was never comfortable with the 33 inch depth of the entire unit not only because it took up more area, but also would look awkward as far as the sides were concerned. They are too small to be that deep. Actually, I did not have much of a choice on this either as the window also assisted in dictating the depth of the sides.

You may notice in the picture that my hearth/shelf spans across the unit. This shelf is actually splitting the distance between the center and the side niches at about 29 inches. This breaks up the 8 inch transition and in my view (or at least my attempt), also brings the fireplace into the wall unit to make it appear as one unit.

There were so many variables with this that there are many items dictated by others. The most difficult (mentally anyway) part of this unit was the design. I spent much time trying to make it all work with the vision that I had. I have and always seem to find a new respect for construction workers when I do these projects. This work is all heavy and tough to do. Throughout the process of working with bowed and warped wood, you question if you will be able to obtain the accuracy and quality you desire, however with patience, in the end, it all comes together.
 
 

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