When you decide to create your own home theater installation, you have the freedom to include all the features you want, at a cost you can easily afford. You can take time to decide how you want the finished entertainment center to look and how best to make use of available space.

By choosing a corner for your entertainment center it will not take up much floor space and you can turn an underused area into something that will keep you and your family or friends entertained for a very long time.

Ready-Made Cabinets

Ready-made cabinets are perfect if you don't want to build everything from scratch.
Ready-made cabinets are perfect if you don't want to build everything from scratch.

If your plans for home theater construction don’t include building everything from scratch, ready-made units are widely available. You can choose to have either glass fronted or open fronted cabinets depending on the look you’re trying to achieve as well as what you have available at hand.

Some corner cabinets that have been designed for kitchen use can just as easily be used as a base unit for home theater installation. This type of cabinet can support a television or be placed below a corner mounted TV. The base cabinet can be used for storage of electrical devices regularly used for listening to music, playing video games, watching DVDs or tuning into cable channels.

When you place a unit at either side of the corner cabinet, you provide yourself with extra storage space for your movies, music and boxed sets. Additionally, a wireless router can be easily kept out of sight in a side unit.

If you don't want to use a wall mount for your TV screen, simply cut a length of shelving or board to place across the top of two cabinets. Then it can support your television nicely between the cabinets.

To complete your home theater construction, all your cabinets should be painted or varnished to match each other and your home decor.

Floating Shelving

If you do want to have a corner mounted television screen, you can get specially designed corner mounts from your local home improvement store.

A well balanced look can be achieved by mounting the TV screen centrally, with a single shelf placed below it and a shelf at each side. These floating shelves will be enough to support remotes, game consoles, small DVD player, cable box and other lightweight peripherals.

Home-Built Cabinets and Shelving

If you are capable of designing and creating your own units, then home theater construction can easily be made to match the decor of the room. Storage units can be constructed to look like existing architectural or decorative features. All you need to do to accomplish this is use the same moldings or similar trims. If the room has a fireplace in it, then the shelving you use in your home theater installation can be closely matched with the mantel shelf over the fireplace.

Connection Cables and Power Strips

Don't forget to plan for wiring and power strips.
Don't forget to plan for wiring and power strips.

When you use adjustable shelves that can easily removed or made to slide out, you’ll have a huge advantage if you ever want to add new a device which will need to be connected or plugged into the power network.

Your home theater installation will look better when there are no messy cables to be seen. These should be hidden when you are setting up your entertainment center in the corner of a room. Power strips can be laid along shelving or kept at the back of the unit, if this is near to a power source. Just make sure that all power strips are long enough to plug into an electric socket and that you can access them without too much difficulty.

Connecting cables can be hidden by drilling a hole in a unit to run these through, or you can fix them to cabinet corners. Use zip ties to keep cables safely bunched together.

As you can see, there are a number of ways you can design your own home theater installation and save money on hiring professionals to do the work for you. That said, if you feel uncertain about attempting some of these ideas by yourself, you can always call on the experienced handyman contractors in our network to help ensure that your home theater installation goes as smoothly and stays as reliable as possible for years to come.

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