First off, I'd like to say thanks for all the great info i've been able to gather from this site.

Moving on :) I just purchased a new home and two rooms in my home have built in Media Niches (Master Bed + Family Room) - I'm working right now and dont have the exact sizes off hand but I know they are some where in the area of 12' x 14'.

Before I start going crazy, I wanted to research building one and materials used (such as finishes, types of woods, etc). I tried searching and was unable to find anything on it... Hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction... As I gather more info, I will be posting what components I plan on placing inside.

I already have my two DLPs - Samsung HL-T6187S and 5687S :)

Any links or ref to articles etc would be great

Pictures / floor layouts would help. As far as type of material, a lot may depend on what the rest of the room is like. Ie, painted trim or stained wood, things like that. You mention 12' x 14'. Without knowing the rest of the room layout, it's rather difficult to imagine what that looks like and what would look good. (should one of those numbers be inches, as in depth?)

Tom

Whoops, almost forgot about this thread... anywhere here are the dimensions... any help would be greatly APPRECIATED !!

Downstairs media niche = 8'10" x 2'5" x 7'11"

Upstairs media niche = 10 x 1'11" x 7'

The only site i've found with what im looking for is here: http://www.woodworkcreations.com/merchant/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=MN

I have pics and will post real soon.

Here are pics of the room

Something to consider is buying doors and then building a cabinet. Good looking doors require a fair investment in tools. The boxes they go on do not. You can get just about any size you want since they will make them to your dimensions.

One sample vendor:
http://www.maplecraftusa.com/HTML2005/cabinets-solidwood.html

Looking through some cabinet making books at HD would help you understand the basic construction designs of Face frame ( traditional) or Frame-less (European) see IKEA.

Also don't overlook the opportunity to use kitchen cabinets to configure a wall unit. Base cabinets are 24 inches deep and would work well for your downstairs niche.

You would select cabinets that would fill the space within an inch or so then just add filler strips or molding and presto built in cabinets.

Sweet - Great idea. Thanks... I bought a couple wood construction books and im slowly getting an idea as to how to go about constructing it...

any here ever turn there niche into a media center?

This was my first build of anything furniture like. I purchased the doors and slides for the equipment rack. But the rest is all just boxes made of 3/4" Oak Plywood.

I did something very similar, although my niche was much smaller than yours and not at the floor level. I basically built a wood frame/shelf inside and mounted my TV on it. Check out the before/after pics attached.

You might be able to do something similar by using some cabinets as mentioned before and building a frame to hold the TV to give it that "floating" look.

We are in the process of building a builtin in our media niche. We hired a craftsman to build our builtin for a little more than $3k. The hole is 63" wide, 27" deep and all the way to the top of the 9' ceilings. We orderd from bottom up: cabinets on the bottom, a row 8" high shelves (3), the tv shelf at the height of the windows, then adjustable shelves on top of the tv. It should be done before Thanksgiving. I'll post some more pics when it's all done.

http://64.128.14.168/famroom.jpg