Making a Flat Screen TV Fit-Wall Unit

Here’s an idea that will work for making a flat screen TV fit into a wall unit that does not have a large enough opening. The space can usually be altered, but it will obviously depend upon your level of carpentry skill. You may be able to hire a local cabinet maker to make the adjustment to your TV space if you do not feel you are qualified to handle the project.

Basically all that has to be done is the partition should be cut back about eleven inches. This can be referred to as just making a notch in the front of the existing pieces. This is obviously only going to work if you are trying to make the space bigger where there is a wall unit section on one side or both from where the TV area is.

I recently altered a TV cabinet where there were three sections to the wall-unit. The TV was located in the center portion of the units. It was necessary to cut the right side of the center cupboard and the left side of the right cabinet, creating the notch that would allow the flat screen to fit.

Tools and Materials Used:

1)      Jig Saw

2)      Block Sander

3)      Router

4)      Plastic Laminate-Formica

5)      Contact Glue

6)      Lacquer Thinner

Procedure For Cutting Out the Partition

I separated the two units from each other that I planned to make the alteration to. I drew accurate lines that would allow for me to cut both cabinet partitions back eleven inches. Using the jig saw I cut the notch into both wall-unit partitions. I did this as individual operations for each wall-unit section. In other words I did not try to cut them both at the same time.  Next, I put the two cabinet pieces (units) back together to see if the cuts lined up with one another. As I had suspected, there was quit a bit of sanding to do to get the two wall-unit pieces that I had cut to line up to be flush with each other. I screwed them together and using the block sander, painstakingly sanded the pieces flush to one another.

Once the new notched out section was prepared to be laminated, I stripped some existing Formica off of some shelves that went to the wall-unit. Being a cabinetry professional this was not a difficult task. I simply put some of the lacquer thinner into a squirt bottle and stripped the laminate that I needed off of the shelves. I then cut the Formica pieces to size and glued them to the raw edges that I had created while making the TV opening larger.

As previously mentioned if you have good carpentry skills and plenty of tools you can do this sort of thing on your own. This type of wall unit alteration is becoming more popular as people begin to replace their old TV sets with the newer style flat screen. Making them fit can be a challenge, but it can save you a lot of money in the long run, especially if you really like your cabinetry.