Finished!

Finally Done.  I finished setting it up on Monday, it took several hours to put in all of the electronics, to do the wiring and, of course, to take a bunch of pictures.  Let's start with the before:

The previous set up.

The old entertainment unit.

And here we see the wiring problem.

More wiring.

Not pretty.

OK, now that we got that out of the way, let's look at the finished cabinet:

Here it is, still in the basement

View from the back with the removable back in place

The top.  It took four coats of polyurethane to get it right

Some of the smaller details:

Removable back with UHMW tape

I was looking for a solution for the removable back so it would slide smoothly in the grooves.  I was expecting to find some sort of wax but I found UHMW tape instead.  It works well.  The only downside was the tape was thicker than I expected so it was tough to apply evenly.  Also the back fits very snug, but it does slide smoothly and doesn't bind up at all which is what I was really looking for.

Powerstrips hidden behind the drawer.

Rear fan for the HTPC

Left Side: HTPC, Cable box & Network Switch

Right Side:  Wii, XBox 360, PS3

Onto the wiring.  As I said this took awhile.  I used a combination of cable ties with cable tie mounts and good ol' electrical tape for the thin speaker wires.

Finally, organized wiring.

The removable back in place, minimal wires exposed.

And lastly, the finished cabinet, all wired up and in place:

Hard to believe I started this project more than 8 months ago.  It took way longer than I thought it would but I'm really happy with the results and it was great learning experience.  Time to sit back and watch some TV.