Building a Home-made Credenza

I designed my system around a wall-mounted plasma display mounted over a lowboy or credenza to hold the equipment.  Wall-mounting gave me the opportunity to get the screen at the optimal height for comfortable viewing.  Also, the articulated wall mount makes it easy to work on the system, and the whole screen can be pulled out and aimed over 45 degrees sideways for watching from the dining room.  In addition, we live in earthquake country -- I feel a whole lot safer having this big, expensive, breakable item securely mounted to the wall.

When I started searching for just the right cabinet, I really couldn't find anything suitable.  I wanted 3 bays, with enough width in the center to fit a high-quality center-channel speaker.  Finally I started pricing custom-made cabinets, which  would have cost $2-3K.  So, being an amateur woodworker, I decided to build my own.  This cost me a bit over $400 in materials, and at least 4 weekends of work, but it came out great and was exactly what I wanted. (You can visit my woodworking pages to see some of my other woodworking projects).