Media Closet

The updates to Grandma's electronic house on the web haven't been all that frequent. But that isn't to say the progress to Grandma's house has ceased. Our latest project was the closet in the living room. Originally the room we now call our living room was the dining room; it had a built-in closet for china and grandma's nick naks (it also had one other closet, which is now part of the kitchen.) When we decided to make the dining room into the living room, we kicked around a few ideas for this closet. For a while, it was going to be a bar area where we would store wine, liquor, and assorted glasses (thanks to too many second and third place showings at the James Gate pub quiz night, we have a very respectable collection.) But there was one other idea that we really liked. What if we put all of the electronics in that closet? The TV was already on the wall, so the absence of a TV stand could maintain the spacious feel of the room. But then what do you do with all those cables when you wall mount your flatscreen TV? Well, the answer lies in that closet.

First, here is the starting material:
We like the glass door. Color selection of sunshine yellow wasn't great. The plaster walls weren't in very good shape, with an unhealthy amount of peeling/chipping paint for added effect. So we decided to just tear it all out and start fresh. Interestingly, that wall on the left was actually two 1x12's. The closet actually went deeper than that, but most of that space was occupied by an AC duct supplying the upstairs bedroom/office with centrally cooled air for those 3 weeks in July/August where it's actually needed. I decided that the ductwork wasn't reason enough to expand the closet, so that meant I had to frame a small wall there. Easy enough when its all coming down.

So the full media plan has a few moving parts. The TV on the wall already had an AC outlet run so it could be plugged in without seeing the power cord. What had to happen was a way to get the cable feed into the closet, then get the video out to the TV. Had to learn about HD signals a bit for this part. In the end, I chose Component cables rather than HDMI for reasons I won't get into here. So I needed to run 2 sets of component cables from the closet to the TV (1 for cable, 1 for DVD). At the last minute, I decided to also run 1 set of speaker wire out for the center mounted speaker on a standard surround sound system. Home Depot sells in wall-rated speaker wire, and I found a supplier of component cables that was properly rated and of a good enough quality that once installed I wouldn't have to worry about a weak signal. Here's how it looks at the TV end:
The outlets are right at the edge of the TV. I couldn't move the TV without it being off center on that wall, and another closet was in the way of me installing anything anywhere else. Looking at the TV straight on you really don't see the wires.

Now, back to the closet. I didn't take any photos with the plaster removed. Needless to say, the amount of dust throughout the entire first floor was simply astonishing. The side wall was framed pretty easily and sheet rock was hung on the walls. After applying joint compound, we got a second wave of dust from when I sanded it smooth. Note in the corner I have a three gang box, containing 2 cable feeds (from the basement), 2 Component video outputs to TV, and 1 speaker output to the TV. Not pictured is a 2 gang box with 4 power outlets:

Now a little paint:
One other little piece of handiwork was related to the remotes. How would the remotes work when in a closet? Maybe the signals would seep through? After a little online research, I found some hardware that basically repeats the signal. I installed the receiver end next to a power outlet (the one near the base of the wall near the door in the next pic). It works great. There isn't any obstacles to it so you just point your remote toward the TV and it picks it up and changes the channel, adjusts the volume etc. We do have too many remotes so a universal remote is probably in our future, but that'll wait til we get a DVR for this TV. Now that Comcast works with Tivo we might go for that.

Shelves for the equipment and DVDs went up after the paint. Now we just have to manage the cables, and we're done!