Examples of subtle, aesthetic, furniture-esque living room cabs?

[dirt]

this is a machine we built for my brother.

[evlbeaver]

Thats nice.  It gives me an idea for a use for my entertainment center if I ever get a plasma tv to replace it.

[JDSkydiver]

Dirt...

That's exactly what I was thinking about!

Or even a chest type box, that the monitor pops up out of.  Either way, real furniture with a surprise hidden inside!

JDSkydiver

[dirt]

i came up with that idea a few years ago and finally got to build it. it has actually been done for about a year and a half now and still works great. when you open the bottom doors there is a keyboard drawer that you can pull out so you can sit down and type. that is the only computer my brother has so he uses the machine as his computer desk as well.



dirt

[Timstuff]

I think it would be really neat to have a cocktail table machine that is also a coffee table. Have a nice wooden exterior, but paint all the horizontal surfaces black, use black buttons, and have a slightly dark tinted glass for the surface. That way, it would look as inconspicuouse as possible unless you have it turned on.  It would look like a nice glass-top coffee table, with the exception of the joysticks and buttons. But with careful design, the control interfaces could be under the glass, which would make them less noticable and they wouldn't stick out from the rest of the table. I think that it would be a great machine for someone who wants to kick up their living room a notch, but also don't want to bring in something that would mess with the aesthetics of their room. If the design was good enough, it could easily kick the crap out of any table you could buy from Ikea or Ethan Allen.

[kcoleman]

maybe you could build the cabinet wide enough so that instead of the control panels sticking it out from the sides of the cabinet they are actually in little cubby holes inside

[Timstuff]

Awesome. Good luck with that, I'd like to see it when it's done.