Description:

A project from Thomas Coyle

I completed this project in 2006 during a major remodel on my house. I was installing my high-end home theater (I used to do professional AV installations in a former life) and needed a way to store my myriad DVDs along with some extra miscellaneous items like blankets, special DVD set cases, remote controls, and so forth, and to hide an in-wall subwoofer. The living room originally had a small (about 50" wide) media niche that had a built-in for TVs and other storage - this didn't nearly meet my desire. I installed a 120" projection screen with ceiling-mount HD projector, so I didn't need this small (and ugly) media niche anymore; I decided to pull it out and replace with the storage I wanted.

STEP1

I've worked with electronics and automation for a long time, and I thought that this would be a great place to use that experience. Searching around, I found your excellent actuators and started to plan.
I bought two each of 6" and 18"-stroke, 150lb tubular actuators, total cost about $460.35. The 18" actuators are used for the center, pull-out DVD racks, and the 6" actuators are used for the far-left and -right swing-open storage doors. The cabinets themselves I bought from Ikea for a

STEP2

Everyone who visits my home is stunned by my cabinets - the look is completely clean since there are no pull-handles and since I painted them to match the walls, and the actuators are very quiet and fast (about 20s to open or close the center racks, and 5s for the sides). The DVD racks themselves can hold 600 DVDs total, and you can see from the pictures the amount of extra storage that's also available. It took me, alone, one weekend to do everything, including installing the cabinets, building