TV Stand - Part I the design

Now that the wedding madness is over I am able to get back into the shop and start work on a new project.  The next thing on my list is a tv stand to replace the one below.  

I have been working on the design for awhile and had originally planned to have two shelves and a drawer in the center, with cabinet doors on either side. The design always seemed a bit awkward to me and I was having issues deciding how to build the internal dividers and shelves.

Then, a couple weeks ago  I cam across a tweet from Darrell Peart of a dresser he was working on that caught my eye. As with all of Darrells pieces, the proportions are elegant and the design has a lot of interesting details. 

On my drawing board now... Freemont Dresser pic.twitter.com/1ANXfbjsDD

— Darrell Peart (@DarrellPeart) April 4, 2013

 I realized that I liked the look drawers all the way across better than drawers and doors.  So...back to the drawing board for me.

And this is where I ended up.  I realized that the open shelf design of the current tv stand is actually pretty useful for allowing access to the back of the components without having to pull them out. With this design in mind I headed off the lumber store last weekend and filled the car with about 50bf of charry and hard maple. two of the boards really stood out.  One has some nice curl and the other is over 10in wide and has pretty consistent sapwood down both edges which I hope to use for the top.

This past week I sent some images of the above design to Chris Wong of Flairwoodworks and one of the hosts of the weekly #Woodchat design discussion.  He invited me on to discuss the design and I got some great suggestions from he and the other guys.  Most of the suggested changes involved allowing for better air flow around the components and for better cable management.

This is the current design that I am moving forward with.  The solid shelves have been replaced with slats to allow better airflow and cords to be routed inside of the piece.

This is a photoshop mock-up of the top. The sapwood has a gentle curve on each end of the board which I am going to follow to create a cutout in the center of the table top.  This split top design will add an interesting design element to the piece as well as allowing cables from the TV to dive straight through the top, eliminating the need for any cables to wrap around the back of the cabinet.