The Media Center

So I'm super excited about this weeks build. I'm actually taking some time away from client work to do a build for my own house for Christmas, a very nice change of pace. When I built the house, I was just getting finished when the morgage crisis and all the other BS of our collapsing economy hit hard. (OCt 07) I was over budget and plain out of money. We were without heat for two months, no stove for seven, ect. Needless to say the media center was very low on the proirity list. As a gift to myself, I decided to get the basic components bought to get the system working on a minimilistic basis. As with all electronics the system spec'd at the time of build was now going obsolete so buying the basic controller components I needed via eBay and end of year closeout sales saved me a ton of money. What hadn't come down in price is the cost of the freaking rack to hold it all, still over $600 just for the rack.

I decided to build one. I started with some 1x4 Lifespan Casing that got painted red for an install job. The customer changed thier mind and wanted white. Knowing it would take three or four coats to fully cover the red with white, I just bought more material to save time, so now I had this red 1x4. Hmmm..

I thought I might do something artsy and dry brushed some black over it. The result was killer. It had this vampire goth look. I liked it, so did the missus, so I started building the framework for the component rack with this...