DESIGNS FOR DELICIOUSNESS - THE LONG AWAITED 2ND CHAPTER IN MY 14 OR SO PART EPIC

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I'm not going to provide any excuses or explanations for my most recent near-month-long dearth in new posts, nor do I plan to provide any for the relatively massive gaps in new material that will undoubtedly arise at certain (though as of yet unannounced) points in the future - the simple fact of the matter here is that when a person such as myself is trying to find a compromise between the fact that he's working full time with the fact that he's always been an unabashedly lazy mother fucker (complicated by the fact that he's picked up several new un-Rubbish-like pursuits in life), there often just isn't all that much time left over to work on random projects.

All of that said, the continued existence of this finely crafted crapbox of a web-based destination does keep me devoting at least a few hours every week to working on utterly random this-ses and that-ses, so you can rest assured that this blog isn't stopping anytime soon... it's just probably going to take a while longer than we originally expected to get wherever the hell it was going, that's all.

Facts:

I got a bit ahead of myself a few weeks ago when I laid out part one in my 14-or-so part epic on the subject of refurbishing my repurposed speaker media cabinet. You see, this post - the post you're reading right now - will outline my basic plans for taking my modestly sized and relatively understated speaker media cabinet and turning it into an utterly enormous and unabashedly loud/obtrusive structure that I probably won't part ways with for the rest of my life (unless of course I at some point experience a house fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, the return of Christ, or the emergence of a significant ladyfriend who owns so much fucking shit that all of my stuff gets thrown in storage because I'm far too laid back to get into a big "thing" about it... and also she's super attractive, which is key. But really, what are the odds of any of that happening?)

To put things simply, this post should have been part 1 of the 14 part series and the previous post should have been part 2, but what's done is done. Tragic as it may be, this post will have to remain part 2 in title but part 1 in spirit for all of eternity. Ah well.

So my governing idea behind all of this is that I wanted to take my media storage cabinet and turn it into the centerpiece of a far grander entertainment center. To accomplish this end I drew up plans for a 3-piece wooden structure that, when connected properly, will surround the media storage cabinet sort of like one of the standing stone structures from Stonehenge (or "like an upside down U" if you want to sound like an uncultured ass). These plans, which shall be revealed shortly, were then handed over to the venerable Father McHanslaw, who had accepted as his charge the task of transforming these crudely drawn plans into real, usable, full-size objects as a present for my most recent birthday.



Measuring 40" tall, 13" wide and 14" deep, the speaker media cabinet will come to be bookended by these meticulously designed pieces of cabinetry (the one that will reside on the left side is pictured here, the right side one would just be a mirror image of it). The dotted line across the top of the structure indicates where a board runs through the middle of the shelving, simultaneously acting as the back of the front side shelves and the right wall of the side shelves. That made sense, right? "No" you say? Perfect.



Resting across the top of the two standing columns (and suspended over the top of the speaker media cabinet) will be this 48x14x12.5" additional piece of shelving, which is about 87% less complicated to explain than the side columns, as is evidenced by the length of this paragraph.

Once completely put together, the end product will look 80,000x better than this...



...but you get the idea.

I'll be moving the shelving inside the speaker media cabinet so that it can house ALL of my retro video game crap - that shall be its sole purpose in life from here on out. Four of the boxes on the piece of shelving that lays across the two columns will be used to house my 4 video game systems (original Nintendo, N64, Sega Genesis, and a Playstation 2), while the other 16 front-facing compartments will be used to hold roughly 250 or so music cds, of which I currently own about 50 or so.

Yeah, that's right, I buy cds. You got a problem with that? Well you shouldn't, because they're way awesome and the rise of mp3's has rendered them virtually worthless, so I've bought almost all of them for less than $3 apiece - a small price to pay for getting to act all self-righteous around people who download their music illegally (these "people" are most generally referred to as "everyone who is currently alive and doesn't live in a 3rd world country"). Three cheers for the digital revolution, I say!

Anyway, I think that wall of music will create a really sharp visual effect (particularly if I only buy good music, which is proving to be a difficult task... God damn you Hulk Hogan and your precious Wrestling Boot Band), but I guess time will tell on that front. Half the shelves will be removable, so I'll have some options if I decide to put DVDs or random pieces of assorted ugly statuettes and other crap (a well documented specialty of mine) in there instead at some point down the road.

I have no idea what I'm going to put in the side cabinets, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

Once this is all done, I plan to stain and seal the whole structure, cover all of the exposed edges with trim, then (though this is only tentatively planned, I'm not sure whether this will end up happening or not) wallpaper much of the exposed wood on the stonehenge cabinet with pictures from old cd inserts and cutouts from some movie posters I have lying around. Army of Darkness paraphernalia figures to play a prominent role in this phase should I ever get there.

Oh, and in the words of the great Peter Falk, there's just one more thing:

The door of that speaker media cabinet you all know and love? Yeah, I'm gonna paint that to look like a giant American flag (subtlety usually isn't my thing, but what can I say? I'm just bemused by patriotism at the moment). That's why I filled in several holes on it and smoothed it all out, as was pictured in part 1 of this epic post stream.

Now, I have to admit that I've already finished the American flag painting portion of this project (come now, who could wait to do something like that?), and I can assure you that it is not only fucking awesome, it is certifiably mother fucking awesome, mother fucker. I'm not normally one to give advance screenings, but considering that anyone who's still reading this blog after 3 weeks of non-activity has to be pretty devoted to the cause, here's a sneak preview of the flag insanity as it existed at about 80% of completion:



Go ahead and marinate on that for a minute. I'll be back soon enough.