Increasing monitor size

[dprush83]

Hello all,

After a long wait I have finally found the right cocktail cabinet for me. I have a question I have not been able to answer by searching the forums or YouTube, so I hope this post clears things up. The original monitor in my cabinet was for a 13", but here is space for much larger. There are two main concerns, though.

The cabinet has a nice plastic black bezel the makes viewing gap-free, if I change my monitor I have not seen how I may be able to custom design such a piece to "hug" my new monitor. My other concern is that the glass has parts that can be viewed, and the rest of the glass is painted black on the back. It looks great, but there are a lot of parts that has chipped paint and looks awful. The glass is scratch free, is here any way to paint the back again without looking awful?

[matsadona]

It would be feasible to replace it with a bigger tube, but you have already identified some areas that are subject for a change.
The bezel could be tricky to do. I assume that the existing one is made by molded plastic? There are a lot of handmade card board (paper) bezels out there that looks great as well. Browse through the forums to get some ideas regarding how to do it.

If you mount a bigger tube, don’t you need a bigger hole and glass too? Replacing it and do a new paint would be more convenient than try to repaint the existing one I suppose.

[paigeoliver]

If you converted a cabinet that originally had a 13" monitor you might find that you will have depth clearance problems with a larger monitor more than height or width. If you use a standard arcade monitor or television tube then you can simply buy the correct size molded plastic bezel. If you use a computer monitor you will have to make your own cardboard bezel.

Scrape the damaged paint off the back of the glass with a razor blade and touch it up with a black spraycan. I have done this on multiple cocktails and it always comes out great. You may want to start with a new piece of glass if you were planning on upgrading your monitor size.

Also, take a picture or two so I can see what you are dealing with.

[dprush83]

Also, take a picture or two so I can see what you are dealing with.

Here is the glass cleaned up and off the cabinet:



A close up of what is wrong with the glass:



The cabinet space without current glass:




So, I'm not sure how to proceed. It would be easy to mount a bigger LCD in there and avoid depth issues, but beneath a new piece of glass it would look quite ugly. I've got a few ideas that have come and gone, but none have felt like an 'Aha!' answer...

[paigeoliver]

My old Time Pilot glass USED to look like that.

I scraped off the loose bits, masked off the monitor area and sprayed the bad spots with black spraypaint. Came out looking like this.

[dprush83]

So, I may have come up with something that will work.  If I step back from a full "reproduction" look and come up with something new...first I will post a picture (a very crude MS Paint picture, at that) and then I will explain.



So on the part labeled "bezel," I was thinking I could get a thin piece of solid wood, paint it black, then design a custom Bezel design to print and stick to the wood.  It would take some precise measurements, but I could then cut a custom hole where the monitor is going to go and try to get it as flush as possible.  I would then have a clean piece of glass (should be cheap enough) sit on top of the new piece and this could solve the problem. 

I have 2 concerns with this.  One, does anybody have an idea of whether or not this would look halfway decent?  And two, I'm not sure how forgiving the brackets currently used to hold the glass down would be with the new depth of the added wood piece.  Would love some feedback on this, as I think it could look quite nice if I figure out exactly how to do it.

[paigeoliver]

Just get your new glass smoked instead of clear. It will hide basically whatever you have going on inside the monitor bay. You probably won't even need a bezel. You are going to have to custom order to get tempered glass in that exact size anyway, so order smoked.

[dprush83]

Just get your new glass smoked instead of clear. It will hide basically whatever you have going on inside the monitor bay. You probably won't even need a bezel. You are going to have to custom order to get tempered glass in that exact size anyway, so order smoked.

Not a bad idea, though I do like the idea of having a bezel.  I have a rough idea of how it could look and I think the bezel could add quite a bit to the overall appeal...I'm just not sure if it will lay right when installed in this way.  To work the wood would need to appear solid from first glance, but unfortunately would need to be quite thin.  I feel like I'm on the right path, but it's not quite making sense to me yet.  Any thoughts on such an overlay?

[paigeoliver]

With dark glass all you should see is the picture on the monitor.

You can actually just paint your bezel onto the back of the glass with black paint.