I’ve never been fully satisfied with the TV stands available on the market.

For one thing, they are either fully exposed (you can see all the cables and stuff), or they have doors.

Designs with doors hold in heat and block signals from remote controls. Open designs without doors are messy.

TV stands are also usually pretty huge. I haven’t seen anything that fits nearly flat against the wall, because they tend to be as deep as stereo equipment plus some extra margin.

My Requirements

Design

There were a few things I wanted to achieve with this design.

One: use smoked plexiglass

This allows IR from remote controls through while providing a clean appearance. A confession: this is actually the 2nd TV stand I’ve built. I used smoked plexi in the first build and it looks and works great.

Two: stand accessories up vertically

Most already support a vertical mode (playstation, Wii), and others can be hacked to work this way (a receiver). This allows for a much shallower design that fits against the wall.

Three: use the speakers for structure

I had large speakers that I liked the sound of, and I didn’t want to have them outside the stand, or in the stand. Making them part of the stand was the perfect solution for me.

Sketching

Because the TV, speakers, and stand all had to fit each other, I took some very careful measurements, and sketched out a design.

sketch

A note of warning:

The kind of legs your TV has are critical for making this design work. It has to have separate legs, not a central base. Luckily I like TCL, and they have been using two separate legs for their models.

Build

I don’t have too many photos of the construction process, but here’s the first time I assembled all the pieces together. You can see I’ve added lifts and cut holds specifically to fit my receiver and all the cables that will come out of the bottom of it:

And here it is again after painting:

The Garage Door

I thought this was going to be hard. I looked at bending plastic myself… it’s precise about temperature and timing if you want a clean look.

So, I walked into TAP Plastics with a sketch. They were amazing; totally understood what I wanted, offered me lots of options, and did the whole thing very affordably:

Actually the door was pretty cheap ($40), it was the small squares above the speakers that were pricy because you need thick plastic (3/8”) to avoid bowing.

Hinge

I figured this out as I went. First I thought a ready-made hinge would be best and bought several from TAP Plastics.

Eventually I went with this simple square of plastic, glued the the door and inserted into a drilled hole on the speaker. Literally a square peg in a round hole 🙃:

Speaker Floats

Your speakers probably won’t be like this, but mine are fabric on the top. The tweeters are actually up there. That meant I couldn’t stand the TV right on the speaker. So, I needed to float a support above the speaker, hopefully in a way that wouldn’t impact the sound too much.

I ended up stumbling on rubber plant pot spacers at home depot. These worked great because they glue well to plastic and would dampen any vibrations from the speaker.

The finished look with edge-polished plexiglass is pretty great, I think.

Legs

I’ve gone through different legs. At first, I thought nylon rollers would be good:

It’s a cool idea, but they don’t roll on carpet and they’re a little too firm for hardwood floors. Maybe they’d be good for very firm commercial carpeting, concrete, or engineered floors.

My advice is to plan for the flooring you have and go with felt sliders for hard floors, that’s what I’m doing.

Finished Product

I built this a few years ago, actually. It’s held up great through two moves, including across states.

The plastic isn’t bowing under the TV, and the door still operates well.

The only thing I’d improve about it is to add a mirror or something to make it easier for the remote control to reach upward-facing sensor on the receiver.

demo animation

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