Introduction: Home Automations Pop Up TV Lift Cabinet in Under Three Hours
How to build a home automations Pop Up TV Lift cabinet using an off-the-shelf dresser drawers and an off-the-shelf Pop Up TV Lift Kit from Firgelli Automations http://www.FirgelliAuto.com/.
You could easily spend many thousands of dollars on a custom built cabinet with Pop Up TV Lift, but for about $500. You could spend more, depending on the ready-to-build furniture you buy, but ours was quite inexpensive. Its the ideal Home automations project
Step 1: Build the Main Portion of the Cabinet
First thing to do is build the main structure of the cabinet/drawers. This will vary from project to project based on the cabinet you get, but you essentially want to put together the unit so you can identify what needs to be modified in order to fit the Pop Up TV Lift.
Our cabinet had a middle support that had to be trimmed to allow the Pop Up TV Lift and the LCD TV to fit in.
Step 2: Liftable Top or Hinged
We went for a hinged top, where a portion of the top hinges at the back and opens as the TV lifts out of the cabinet.
I've heard of people having a section of the top lift straight up with the TV, you'd just need to have a bracket or something to attach the top of the lifting column to the under side of the cabinet top. Either way will work, as long as there's an opening for the TV to come out of. Kind of pointless otherwise! ;-)
So we cut a portion of the top based on how far out the TV lift column and the TV came.
We then used some 2x4 attached on the inside of the cabinet on either side for the hinges to attach to. Make sure you drop the 2x4 down a touch to accommodate the hinge so the cabinet top can still be flush with the hinges attached (see photo).
Step 3: Mount the Pop Up TV Lift Column
Next thing we did was mount the Pop Up TV Lift column to the inside of the cabinet. You may need to leave a tiny bit of room to add a backing, depending on how you do it. We left the backing off for the time being.
You'll want to make sure the Pop Up TV Lift column has a very sturdy support at the base. Because we used an inexpensive (read cheap) cabinet, the bottom was particle board and not strong enough. We put a large piece of wood underneath, where there would normally just be dead space. This gave us a very sturdy support at the base.
Step 4: Completing the Cabinet
Next we finished building the cabinet by adding the front drawer faces. We attached them with finishing nails, but you could attach them from behind and not have any evidence on the outside.
Step 5: Attach the TV and Finishing Touches
Next thing we did was get the TV mounted onto the Pop Up TV Lift. This was fairly straight forward with the universal TV mount that comes with the Pop Up TV Lift Kit.
We placed the power/control box inside the cabinet and attached the cable to the Pop Up TV Lift column, then plugged the power box into the wall.
A push of the remote control button and things were under way!
A couple of tweaks here and there, including adding a section of 2x4 with a rounded corner. You can see in the photo that it's placed on the top of the column so that the lid can hinge. Chances are you can do a much more graceful and nicer looking 'lid lifter', but this was good for the meantime.
We also attached a flap of cardboard to the back side of the TV lift so the hinged lid wouldn't catch when the TV was coming down. Again, not high tech, but got the job done.
Step 6: Done! Pop Up TV Lift in Just a Few Hours.
Check out the Pop Up TV Lift at http://www.FirgelliAuto.com/
