Zen and the Art of Home Entertainment Center Customization

I love it when electronic gadgets I own die. I’m not even kidding — I really do! And the reason I love it when things I own break is, I get to replace them with new things!

In 1998, after returning to Oklahoma after living in Washington for a year and a half, Susan and I bought our first “real” house. Prior to that we had lived in a mobile home, an apartment, and the busted up house in El Reno (which barely qualified as a house). Either as a house warming gift, a birthday present, or an anniversary gift (all three dates were right around the same time), Mom bought us a black entertainment center. Susan and I assembled it one night while drinking margaritas. A few days later we bought the TV we’ve owned for the past 12 years, a 35″ RCA CRT. Here is a picture from 1999 of my nephew playing Ready 2 Rumble on the Dreamcast in our living room. You can see the television and the entertainment center in this picture. The sides of the entertainment center were stacked with PlayStation and Dreamcast games.

My nephew is 15 years old and 6’2″ now.

Although the television has been on its last legs for some time now, the thing simply will not die. The coax (cable) connector on the back of the TV died years ago. The only way to watch television on it is to route run the coax from the wall into the back of a VCR, and then run RCA cables out of the VCR into the back of the television. Turning on the television has become a chore as well. If the TV’s been off overnight, you might have to hit the power button four or five times to get the TV to turn on and stay on. And then, this year, the TV picture started shaking. It’s not too noticable when watching a TV program, but whenever there’s text on the screen the letters wiggle more than those inflatable wigglers outside every car dealership.

I’ve been waiting years now for that thing to die, but it won’t — so this weekend I said “screw it” and bought another TV anyway.

It’s a Sony Bravia 52″.

Here is our current entertainment setup. It’s the same television and entertainment center we had back in 1998, but in a new house. Note that there’s no way a 52″ television is going to fit in that thing … but my thought was, maybe it would fit on top of that thing (the botttom half, anyway).

After removing all the clutter (DVDs, mostly) the next step was to remove the television. The current model of this television weighs 200 lbs; I think this one weighs more. It is physically impossible for me to lift this television by myself (I’ve tried). Fortunately, with the help of a friend (gravity), I was able to move the television to the floor.

Thud.

The next step involved moving “the top half” of the entertainment center. Now I know what you’re thinking — “why didn’t he buy a new TV stand when he bought a new TV?” Well, we tried. Sam’s only offered one model, one both Susan and I thought was overpriced and understyled. We then stopped by Best Buy on the way home. All the stands we found there either didn’t meet our needs, or “looked like they belonged in a dorm room”. (By the way, that last comment was Susan’s. I thought they all looked really cool.)

The last time we moved the entertainment center (from our old house to the new house), it started coming apart. I solved this problem by adding around 80 additional wood screws. Around midnight, with the kids sleeping in the dining room (“tent slumber party”) and Susan asleep in our bedroom, I began removing them all with a drill. With all 10 of the original screws out plus 79 of the additional screws out, the top section still would not budge. When I removed the 80th screw, the entire top half of the entertainment center toppled over and came crashing down on top of me. Susan was not amused with the loud crash waking her up.

It is amazing how long a 1″ cut will bleed. “Merely a flesh wound …”

After removing the pile of extra wood, I placed the new television on top of the old entertainment center and, voila! It’s not great, but it works for the time being.

This weekend was “big trash pickup”, so I moved all the extra pieces out to the curb. After advertising our old television on Facebook for free for a day, I wheeled it out to the curb as well. Mason made a sign that said “FREE. WORKS.” and taped it to the front of the television. A few minutes later I told Mason we should add “LIFT WITH YOUR KNEES” as a joke to the sign, but when we went back out there, we found this:

In less than fifteen minutes, a couple of neighborhood kids and their dad (it took three of them to lift it) loaded the television into their car and scurried off.

The only downside to our new setup is, the sleekness of the new TV and the removal of the entertainment center has left me with no where for these:

That’s about 90 DVDs. There are also (sigh) 50 cases that we can’t find the movies for, and another 50 or so DVDs that we can’t find cases for.

This is the DVD shelf I built when we first moved into our new house. Quoth the Raven, “I will never own more than 500 DVDs.”

Well yeah, now I have thousands. The last part of this project was picking 100 or so DVDs to move upstars to make room for kid DVDs that will remain downstairs.