Everyone starts somewhere. I started with nothing more than a garage sale miter saw (still have and love it), a plastic speed square, tape measure, and a pencil. That tool collection has substantially improved at this point.

 

Definitely appreciate all the shared experiences cause it has saved me more than a few times from having to learn the issues on my own.

 

So got a bit more done last night. I think I have all my cutting done finally. I got all the boards cut for the sides and also cut the edge trim for the top. Worked really well putting the blade up to 1.75in and ripping 1/8in off the thickness down to 11/16th.

Saw set to 11/16th


Boards ripped to 1.5in and before being trimed down to 11/16th


After I ripped them down to 11/16th thick


Set up the saw for 30 1/4in and cut all 32 verticals




Then cut the 4 top and bottom rails for the 55in long side panels




Tonight I will be giving the router a huge workout with all the tongue and groove as well as the chamfered edges on everything. The only cutting I might have to do is two new long lid trim pieces. I went and mocked them up and think even though I measured 3 times I might have shorted myself 1/8in of clearance I had been hoping to have. I think only having 1/16th in clearance on each end of the lid is probably a bad idea with would and expansion from moisture.

 

 

Why did you go with the Rigid saw stand over a Dewalt?

 

yeah that bugged TF out of me but i let it slide



price i bet

 

HD has them both at $199.99 right now. Only thing I see being different is the larger wheels on the rigid. Heard complaints on the Dewalt up and down motion.

 

being the key

maybe ridgid went on sale in the past

 

u guys are brand specific loosers.
bet you all still drive acras.

 

Leaning towards a Rigid vac over a Dewalt.

 

I got the Rigid saw on a super deal a couple of years ago. It was less than $100 and at the time Samsung was selling Home Depot gift cards at 20% off using Samsung Pay so got it for even less then. No other reason really.

 

you all figured it out. Plus the saw is super old. This saw is probably 15-18 years old. My dad bought it years ago when I put in some hardwood floors in my parent's house growing up.

 

I have the Rigid vac and it is good. Got it on a deal as well. I paid like $50 for it like 5 years. Pretty much all my tools I have picked up have been from crazy deals found on SlickDeals during black Friday or the holidays.

 

I love my Rigid vac. That things picks up everything!

 

Yeah it has worked great in dust collection duty for all my tools as well. Do need to pick up a new filter for it though.

 

Slacked on pictures last night but did get all the tongue and groove work finished. So everything is done in that regard. I still need to do the chamfer on all the boards though as it got too late to be running a router in my driveway.






I will say this though. Next time I do tongue and groove with nonuniform thickness wood I will give in and buy a variable speed router to use those Freud bits I bought. Trying to do a pass on each side and not make the tongue too small is hard. I started doing both sides conservative and then doing the backside till it fit. Ended up with several tongue and groove boards that are a little loose at one end but figure I can put them between boards that fit good and I should be fine.

 

My Rigid vac sucks.....

 

I heard it sucks

 

Damnit I should have scrolled

 

Awesome!

You vacuum your tools?

That's good to hear!

 

I got home from my golf trip yesterday and got a little bit more work done. I figured out which boards looked best together for my front panel and the two side panels. I will use whatever is left for the back panel. I prefer the look of the red cedar the most so most of these three panels are made of that leaving the white cedar for the back side of the cabinet. I then got to work getting the router setup for the amount of chamfer I wanted for the boards and ran all the side panel boards through as I didn't have much time before 8pm to get them done and not piss off my neighbors. I glued up the first side last night and then got up this morning after them being clamped for about 10hrs and glued up the second one.

Dry mock up


Test fit to make sure it fit before glue up


Gluing up the two outside boards. The inner ones will just float free. Getting the boards all the line up in the groove is much harder that I expected. It is going to be really interesting on how I get 17 boards to line up with 3 of them being glued.


All clamped up to dry



Tonight I hope to get one of the back panel glued up so it can dry and then I can do the front panel Tuesday night. Once I get the back done I will move on to working on my trim for the lid.

Still need to figure out if 1/16 on each side of the cabinet is enough clearance or if I need to cut new trim that gives me 1/8 clearance for the lid trim around the exterior of the cabinet.

 

I got the rest of the edges chamfered on the boards for the large panels last night and finalized the layout of the boards the best I could to make them look good together. The longest part was having to file down a bunch of the tongues a bit to make them not fit too tight in the groove to allow for assembly. Basically had to check all of them and lightly file about half of them.

Front Panel


Back Panel - I have also decided I will bolt the back panel on to be removable like the front and sides rather than screw it on from the inside like I had originally planned.


Gluing up the front panel


Wasn't as bad as I thought to get everything lined up but it was still difficult for sure getting 17 boards in place for the tongue and groove when they are not all exactly the same thickness.




Tonight I will get the back panel glued up and cut new trim for around the lid as I have confirmed I cut them too short sadly. 1/16in gap is not enough to allow for wood expansion. I will feel much safer with a 1/8in gap all the way around the cabinet.



Also got the outdoor wireless AP temporaily setup inside my attic window for testing last night as well and found that I get plenty of speed over 5Ghz for being able to stream 4k from the spot the TV will be. The Roku will be mounted on the back of the TV so it will be lifted out of the cabinet when the TV is raised. I decided to go this route to get the best wireless signal I could rather than leave it in the bottom of the cabinet with a long HDMI cable.

 

I do.....

 

So last night got a good bit done. Makes me feel like there is a chance I might make my deadline now at least. I have three completed side panels and got the 4th glued up and in the clamps last night. I also got the holes drilled on the 3 panels and the t-nuts installed to attach them to the cabinet with.

Got a new piece of cedar to make the lid trim out of since I cut the last ones too short. Managed to find a 1x6x8 that didn't have any nots in it so figured it was a good look for the trim.


Got the back panel glued up. When I went to tighten the clamps the top board started to bend up so I figured on a simple solution to keep it flat on the clamp bars.


Then got around to the panel mounting. Clamped the panels in place each time so they wouldn't move while I drilled all the holes.


Drilled the holes just big enough for the bolts to fit first. I also drilled these holes by stepping up twice from different bit sizes. One other tip I always start by drilling in reverse for a second to get the bit started where I want it.




Then used a forstner bit to counter sink for the t-nuts. Also had to use a slightly large dril bit to drill the bolt hole out on this side for the t-nut to fit into. The forstner bits are not easy to get started with a hand drill I have learned. I am a bit concerned with this now for how I will drill neat holes for the figure 8 fastners.


Inserted the t-nut


Used my handy t-nut installing tool




Fully seated in




Bottom part fully seated in


One panel test fitted on


The front and both sides finished on the bottom as well.


Trying to figure out what I will do to attach the back. I had planned on originally used just wood screws to attach it but I think the boards only being 13/16in thick will not put enough threads into it to hold securely over time. So going to use the same bolts I am installing the front and sides with but in the back bottom middle I have the supports for the TV stand blocking where I would install the t-nut. So I could use a boaring bit large than the nut to drill through both supports so I can get access or I can just try and insert it without counter sinking it with some pliers in the small gap I have. Only issue is I bought my bolt length for them being countersunk so that the bolts don't still out inside the cabinet so I will need to order a pack of longer bolts. Not a huge issue. Or just only go with 2 bolts on the bottom and 3 on the top physically and cut one bolt and glue it on so it looks the same all around.

 

Awesome work, looks like it's coming together!

 

Looks good, man.
Hopefully it sits flat on the pavers! So hard to level!

 

So we are getting close to the end finally. Got the last of the outer panels finished up last night. Manged to squeeze a t-nut into the small gap I left for the lift supports thankfully so everything will be symetrical.

Rear middle t-nut just fit. I think I had like 1/8in to spare while using some long needle nose pliers to fit it in.




Removed the lift and was able to carry the frame myself then out to the backyard. Measured like 8 times and then cut the holes in the floor for the conduit.


Unfortunately I am not a master paver insatller it appears. The hole setup is level left to right but apparenlty is off front the back diagonally somehow. The one rear leg need a 3/8in shim and the one front leg need 1/8in. Hopefully since I used cedar scraps for those it won't be an issue but I might have to figure out something better long term to level it out. I might even consider long term tearing the entire thing out and drilling in some adjustable leveling feet into each post.


I feel like I am finally on the home stretch now. Glued the trim for the lid together last night. I will then install it with figure 8 fastners this evening after I cut the lid to length. I will be honest the lid feels much heavier than expected I hope the lift can handle it.

 

listen flat earther...
the earth is not flat...hence the paver job isn't flat.
can you loosen up a few boths push down on the top to make the legs drop down so it is even?
or would it being out of square make you lose sleep?


That thing is gonna be so hard to chop into with an ax to steal your tv! Prick!

 

Everything is glued and screwed so there won't be any moving anything around. Plus if it is out of square like that not sure how well the lid will fit. Best I could do would be to try and do the calculations for how much to cut off each leg to make it shit flat and do that quick before everything is in place. Not sure if it is worth the risk.

Hoping it will be hard to steal for sure.

 

I would just cut some thin pieces to shim it up. Glue them onto the bottom of the legs already. No one will notice it.

 

^ This. Trying to match the ground is an exercise in futility. Next seasonal change and you'll have the wobble in a different place lol. Either shim it or get leveling feet and call it good.

 

move to flat earth?

 

Badass man!

 

Yeah going to shim it for now and hope for the best cause I am hoping to have it all working tonight. We will see how that lasts and if it becomes and issue then worst case is I have to remove the TV, top, lift, and then unwire the sound and power so I can put some leveling feet on it at a later date.

 

damnit random things showing up in quotes

 

+1 for shim & adjust as needed as seasons/weather change.

 

+1 on leveling feet

 

Maybe add a discrete bubble level on each side (inner panel?) so you can quickly see if it needs a shim/adjustment.

 

slap that fuckin 65" westinghouse in that bitch and start wankin to p0rn in the woods already!

 

So huge update coming. Bear with me this will be lengthy. So Thursday I began working on the cabling for the cabinet.


Started with mounting the boxes in the cabinet




Ended up removing the box when it was time to run the cable though




Being such a short run this cable was much easier to pull






Once all the cables were pulled I started getting the outlet wired up and components mounted.


For audio this is the solution I finally decided to go with. They had cost a little more than I think they should but the reviews of them were excellent. I didn’t want to chance having crap audio so I went with them. They have the option to use stereo cable or standard LR Audio. I used the LR since that is what the TV output is.


After all that was mounted I got the lift back installed inside the cabinet.


With most of the electronics taken care of I decided to move onto the lip so that at least things would be covered for the night.

Time to cut up the lid. Measure a million times and cut once. I started trimming one edge square first.




Then measured 100 more times and even tested the trim for the lid which wasn’t perfectly square but I was able to fix that when I mounted it. All trimmed up.


Next, I mounted the figure 8 fasteners to the trim after drilling the recesses with a forstner bit.




Then I went about getting the trim mounted to the lid.






I had been too scared originally to cut the top too short so I errored on the side of caution.


I resolved this with several passes from a flush cut bit on my router.


The lid all complete. It is almost too nice to put it outside honestly. As well as this top came out I am almost certain I will build myself my foyer table finally rather than buy one.


Test fit of the lid on the cabinet. Fits perfect. All gaps came out even.


With the lid on I marked all around the top mount on the underside of the lid and in all the screw holes and got the lid mount installed.



At this point it was dark and I pretty much could no longer see enough to work outside and the Eagles vs Packers game was about to start so I covered the stand with a tarp and called it a night.

The next day I started by getting the remaining wiring complete.


Everything that is permanent is neatly mounted with screw cable ties to make sure nothing comes disconnected. (Please ignore the fact that small mess in the bottom right of the IR sensor and the Harmony hub. I have not gotten this to work yet so not even sure it will stay in the cabinet.)


Next it was finally time to get the TV mounted and test out the lift. It took me probably 20-30min to get the mount aligned.


Just fits when closed. I left myself space for a wider TV but don’t think in the end I left enough space for it to be taller. That said I don’t think I would ever upgrade to anything bigger outside anyways.


Once everything was working smoothly I neatly ran all the cables in their permanent locations. The bulge of cable to the left of the lift is so the TV can be pulled out to since I am using a bracket that can angle 60 degrees in either direction.


At this point it was time to put all the sides on the cabinet and see it together for the first time.