The basement den in the new house has a really nice built in TV cabinet.

The problem is that gargantuan TVs are too cheap these days, and the one we bought a couple years ago doesn’t fit.  We’ve had the TV propped up in front of the built in cabinet on a temporary stand (the one we used at the old house.)  Our plan was to build a cantilever shelf that just fits into the built in cabinet, which would support the TV, and is non-destructive.  Should we get rid of the current behemoth for a smaller TV, we could just take out the cantilever unit, and things would basically be back to the original state.

I wanted to match character with the original unit, which appears to be built from 3/4″ MDF, and has tasteful lips around all the basic boxes like so

These edges are all 1.5″ thick, 2x the width of the stock used for the box portions of the unit.  Here’s what I built (still not sanded, nor painted)

This is a big shelf, “weighing in” at 51″ wide.  Since I had a left over wide shelf reinforcing bar, I’ve used that underneath

My joinery isn’t perfect, and looked pretty bad before sanding, especially with the glue smears, showing.

After a hand-sand this looked much better.  Only the portion at the very front really needs to be sanded, since the rest will be hidden.  I’ve got to pick up my sander from the old house, and give things a good once over before priming and painting.

Because the shelf and the TV are both big and awkward, I’ve installed it temporarily, even though it’s not sanded and painted yet.  This will keep the TV out of the way for now: