The New Handcrafted Entertainment Center

Ever since the attic was rehabbed into a third floor man cave and entertainment space, I’ve known that a necessary next step was getting an entertainment center for the main area where the television and speakers and supporting electronics are.

Thanks to the amazing craftsmanship and careful design considerations of my college suitemate Ronnie, who’s a damned fine carpenter and electrician, that dream is a very delightful reality.

With a floating set of shelves up top, and a sturdy wide bottom cabinet and shelves, it more than manages and accommodates all the necessary stuff that’s central to modern streaming life enjoyed also by people of a certain age...who still might watch DVDs or Blu-Rays or even old VHS tapes.

And while I won’t say it was a cakewalk, getting these two huge pieces in through the front doors and making the difficult turns of two flights of stairs was much easier than I’d feared!

Up top are places for the Sonos units and the WiFi router and the constellation projector, plus more space for media storage; down below is extra space for batteries and remotes, tucked away and out of sight in the handy drawers at the bottom. Ronnie made the shelves adjustable and we tried to leave plenty of room given that future TVs are likely to be even more ridiculous in size.

He’s been working on it in his shop since late winter, using some designs I worked up in a quiet spell during the summer of 2022. Time continues to get away from me: seven years' delay to even get around to coming up with some drawings to share with a carpenter; a couple of false starts with yet another for-hire carpenter who took the job and then never showed for it; and finally turning to my faithful friend Ronnie.

Ronnie's skill and his can-do spirit, plus remarkable patience and fortitude in helping achieve even the smallest “dream” elements of this set-up, means there is a gorgeous addition that’s incredibly functional and also rather a lovely sight to behold.

Above and below are those initial diagrams I put together.

Bringing in the two big sections, getting them mounted and secured, adding the drawer and cabinet hardware that matches what’s in Ray’s the Bar, cutting the wire and cable passthroughs, and turning around a couple of the outlets all took place on Friday, September 6th. Then Ronnie came back that Sunday and got all the upper portion’s cord and cable access completed and finished the trim work such as tying in the baseboards and running the shoe molding around. I am so thrilled with the final product and how perfectly Ronnie put it all together and completely honored my hopes for how to make it “work” and also be well-matched to the rest of that grand and gracious expanse of space. And here's a peek inside the mechanical room behind the entertainment center, where all the wires come through:

This has loomed for a decade as a necessary next step in creating just the right set-up in this room where so much time is spent. With all that equipment, and more wires and cables than I can keep straight, for so long sitting on or near a retired squat office table gifted to me by a colleague when I was on faculty at Wake Forest...it’s been hard to keep organized or clean—especially in a dusty old house with two dogs who manage to shed a fair amount. This is how it was all set up before the arrival of Ronnie’s elegant creation (and I'm embarrassed to look at it):