New HiFi Rack
When I built our first family home in Pakenham back in 2015, part of the design was to reduce furniture – especially in the lounge room – I really wanted the lounge to be a little more like a home theatre – so just seating. As a result, I ended up installing the AV rack into the wall up high, out of the way, ensuring no furniture was required.
As part of the move to our country cottage, I didn’t want to to the same thing again, and instead opted for a more traditional approach – a floor standing HiFi cabinet. I spent ages looking for something that I like and that would be functional, but not cost more than all of my HiFi equipment combined. That was a challenge, for me, remember that appealing & looks are afterwall, subjective.
After we moved, I revisited this as the equipment was either still packed, or sitting on an old piano stool under the TV (that I recently wall mounted). I looked at various HiFi retailer sites, eBay, Amazon, took to Google Images to see if I could find something I would like, and then reverse image search to find the vendor, but nothing took my fancy – well, nothing for under $5,000AUD anyway…
So, a visit to my local Bunnings Warehouse to see what materials are available, a few hundred dollars later (I purchased other items for upcoming projects), a few hours of woodwork & metal work later and we have this:
Note that I have included metal work in my works – that was to cut down & clean up some old comms rack posts – so that stuff can be rack mounted, because, well, I love rack mounted stuff!
First rack mounted item is the rails to hold an APC UPS – yep – giving my HiFi gear a UPS!
Made some shelves, sanded, loaded up and we have this:
Behind the drawer is a 10 outlet PDU (power distribution unit) – basically a rack mounted 10way power outlet board – used in server racks – all of the equipment connects to the PDU, then the PDU connects to the output of the APC UPS, and that connects to the wall power – cleaning up much of the messy cabling that was previously an eyesore on the floor.
So what’s next? A nice, but simple handle for the drawer, and to choose a varnish – clear or colour?
Comment your thoughts…
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