How to Kid Proof Your Entertainment System.

A while back I bought my wife an ipod touch, and ever since my kids have treated our TV like a large touch screen device. I got tired of wiping sticky fingerprints off the screen and so we decided to put our TV up high. This is a fairly straight forward thing, but I added a few features that make this project extra fun. One of the first purchases I made was a network media device, to hold and play all my movies so that I wouldn't have to deal with scratched DVDs.

For this project I used:
-one 4 ft x 4 ft sheet of plywood.
-one 3 ft length of 2" PVC pipe.
-black spray paint.
-full motion TV mount.
-power strip.
-spool of speaker wire.
-3 2" cable hole grommets
-2 12" lengths of angle aluminum.
-2 ball berring drawer slides.
extras
-cirago Multimedia device.

Step 1: Keep All of the Electronics Out of Reach.

First thing to do is decide how much stuff you need to keep, Audio receiver, bluray player, ipod attachment, gaming consoles, and Multimedia devices. My receiver was the largest thing to build into the shelf so I focused around that. I built a rectangle base that was just a little larger then the base of the receiver. Then I cut two pieces of plywood in the shape of a triangle that would be big enough to fit the rectangle base in. I rounded the corners and put large holes (2 3/8") in the three corners. These holes were large enough to fit 2" PVC pipe that I cut to a length of 11". Before I assembled everything I used some ball bearing drawer sliders to mount the rectangle inside the triangle. I had to use a router to cut some slots so the sliders would leave enough room for the receiver. The pictures will be a help in understanding these steps.

Step 2: Put It Together.

I drilled 1" holes into the pipes so that I could get the wires in. the everything was ready to put together. The holes were tight and so it took some work, and a rubber mallet to get it in place. but once it was in I put some screws in from the side that would be up against the wall. At that point it was all ready to be painted. I wanted to stain the wood on the top and bottom and have not done that yet but I did paint the inside space black because I wanted that part to be difficult to see, dark and hidden.

Step 3: Hide Your Valuables

The angle aluminum is used to mount the shelves to the wall go directly into the studs to hold up the valuables.

I decided to hide my Wii behind the TV because I did not want it to be obvious that I had a Wii and because it is so simple, the remotes use bluetooth so you do not need line of sight to use.

I use a Multimedia device because I did not want to have to deal with scratched DVDs and Blurays. or having a tons of shelves of movies that take forever to go through. So now I rip all my movies put them on my multimedia device or on my network where I can still access them. Then I take the movie to my parents house too keep it safe in their much larger storage area.