I Built a $3,000 DIY Outdoor TV Console

This is our outdoor patio. It's an awesome space for entertaining and hanging out. One of the things I've wanted to create for a long time is a hidden lift-up TV console. So, we're going to have a console out here that looks like a cabinet or maybe even a bar top. And then with the flip of a switch, the TV comes up. You can watch it from the hot tub or the pool. Let's get started. To get this started, I picked up about 61 board feet of my favorite wood species, which is ash, white ash. The reason I like it is because it's lighter than oak, though it doesn't have the yellowish amber look to it. Uh it's not too expensive and it's super sturdy. We're going to start milling this puppy up. It's going to take a while. 12 boards, 61 board feet. Take a wild guess how much this cost. $500. Close, four. And we might be at five or six cuz I don't think I got enough. I didn't stop to just calculate. I just kind of went, "Ah, this looks like enough." Measure with your eyes. One of those. I don't care what they tell you, milling sucks. There are some weirdos out there who's like, "Oh, it's therapeutic. I actually like it." I don't. I like when there's shorter boards, not 10-footers. That's just All right, off to the table saw, then planer. When you're working with beautiful, clean, primo wood, it's exactly looking the way you need to look, nice and clean, nice and straight, nice and square. But, what we're going to do next, we're going to start chopping up to size. I'm thinking because my TV is 57 in wide, give it a few inches on each side for spacing, plus a little extra for that rough, you know, glue up and then trim to size. I'm going to cut it all to 62 and then see where that takes me. Oh, that's a tight fit right there. That's a real tight fit. So, let's talk texture. Originally, I was going to do these gap cleat spaced out. The problem with that is you have water, bugs, and all that stuff coming in there. So, that's out of here. The next idea that I have, which I think we're going to go with, is if we create a chamfer on the side. A chamfer is just a 45° straight bevel edge. We created on both of these boards going across. So, it'll create that look like, you know, when you have a tongue and groove cedar boards joined together, you'll get that look right there. I think it'll create a perfect amount of texture. These are about 5-in wide boards at this point. It's going to look awesome. We're going to throw it on the router cuz that's going to be the fastest way possible to keep it consistent, and then we'll start talking about glue. Woo! We are back. Because I got everything chamfered up here, we got to make sure that these suckers, when they're getting glued up, are perfectly flat. We can't afford to flatten things out as, you know, after the glue up because that'll ruin the chamfer. So, to make sure it doesn't get out of whack, we're going to get these biscuits, create a little slot in there, put that biscuit in there, and what that'll do is keep it in the same plane, so it'll save our butts when it comes to sanding. I just got to make sure I go get a wet rag because when wood glue squeezes out into these chamfer slots, I got to make sure that sucker's clean cuz stain will not get into it and sanding is going to be a bit Well, there we have it, folks. Nice, clean glue up, nice flat, got rid of all the glue, made sure we got a little reinforcement so this thing is not overly tightened and starting cupping out or bowing out. Got to let it rest overnight, tomorrow pop it out. I'm going to have to work through Saturday and Sunday to get all three panel glue up so that Monday we can start slapping this sucker together. We got to do the top and the bottom. I need more lumber. It's been about 3 days. The panels are looking freaking incredible. These are already done. There's two behind here. These are the sides. The biscuit joints were clutch move. These are nice and flat. I got to do a little bit of sanding on the back side just to make it clean all around. This is going my side panel. There's going to be two of them, so I made a little bit longer of the offcut pieces that I had, straighten the side, cut it in half cuz I only really need two 18-in pieces and this will be perfect. Now, I got to do the bottom piece and I got to do the top lid piece. We'll glue those up, let them enough time to dry, sand them, and then we'll be ready to start seeing what kind of mess we're going to start building with all this stuff. It's always so fun to see panels like this come to life cuz now you're like, "Oh, we just sculpted something." Sculpting we did, folks. I'm dreading this part, sanding. We got a ton of sanding to do. We got panels all over the shop. They're all done. They're all glued up overnight. Uh the back side is the ugliest side because that's where a lot of stuff is dripping and I couldn't wipe it away. The front side, where all of our chamfers are, they're fine. They're looking good. I don't want to kiss pee too much. Going to hit it with 80 grit, work up to 120, finish up with 220. And I got a feeling with those little notches that we chamfered out, we're going to have to do a little bit of a deep sand, a little micro adjustments there just to make sure everything's nice and clean. Cuz you see, that's the double-edged sword with this whole Titebond 3 wood glue. It's waterproof, which is wonderful and super strong tensile strength. But, when it does dry, it has more of a whitening effect even though you clean it up with tons of, you know, damp towels and stuff like that. Got to clean all the little hazy white stuff off the front, you know. That's the cost of having a nice, strong glue. All right, guys. Let's take a little break from this console fiasco. 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I bought this TV lift on Amazon for I want to say like 130 bucks or something like that. It's maximum width for the TV is 64 in, which is perfect. That's the outdoor TV we're going to use. I'm going to start putting all this hardware together, and then we'll bring the TV in and do like a dry fit to see how low and how high it sits. So, fingers crossed our cabinet that we built is going to be enough. Why am I laughing? It's going to suck. I'm going to have to redo it. Woohoo! Look at this thing. Let's see how high it goes. I like that it's heavy duty. All right, that's enough. All right, we're going to lower it, bring the TV in, see how it mounts it in. All right, that's enough. Okay. All right, let's test it out. This platform right here attaches our top lid, so it'll raise and lower with it. This is as low as I can get the 64-in TV down. Okay, here we go. Let's try this. All right, I'm not going to go higher than that because I don't want this thing tilt over and break on me. Good news, bad news. Good news is everything lines up perfectly. Bad news is my panels are one extra 5-in strip too short. So, I'm going to spend 1 day to glue up all four sides and then I'll be able to assemble. Dang it. We're so close. So freaking close. Got all my pieces, front, back, side, side. I didn't want to put them completely sideways cuz I didn't want to see the end grain exposed. So, I kind of made these little L brackets, transition pieces, that will help get it in place. How do we secure it? We're going to use the trustiest tool of them all, the Festool Domino. This is the crème de la crème of all the tools. It was actually one of my most expensive purchases I bought when I first got started in and it stayed with me this long. Here's the plan. I am going to line these up and put one tenon on each of these slats, which uh totals to about eight of them. That'll give me adequate strength, throw them in place, do a dry fit before we commit to the sucker. And the nice thing with this Domino is that you could set how wide or how tight you want your mortises to be. So, there's three settings, really tight, medium, and then very loose. And the loose ones are for adjustment. So, I put the loose one slightly here. These ones are nice and tight. So, if I need to move it here somewhere, I can. Oh, how gorgeous is that? So satisfying. So satisfying. I think today's going to be a good day. Don't jinx it. Knock on that wood. What's the Oh, yeah. I was going to say, is there like some kind of thing we can hang here to like break bad luck? Cuz I think we kind of need it. Sage? Yeah. Should I burn sage in here? to burn sage, yeah. Ooh. That's not good. I need one of those woodworking tables to get this done properly so I can clamp it. Gorgeous. That's just gorgeous when there's a nice tight fit. Now, if you don't have a Domino, you can definitely get away with using a pocket hole jig. So, you can just pocket hole all that stuff inside. That'll be a more DIY approach, I guess. Is it bulking season? It's bulking. I'm getting roided out, man. I'm going to be jacked city. People are going to be like, is that the Hulk? Ooh, is that Chris Hemsworth? I'm like, nah. No, just Mr. Build It. It's just me, guys. It's me. I'm I'm the people's guy. Woohoo! She's a beaut, Clark. Oh, she's a beaut. Looks like a coffin. It does, right? The funny thing is, if I just use pocket screws and none of these side stuff, I could even do the side stuff. This would have taken maybe like a day and a half. But with all that stinking glue ups and so much freaking sanding and milling, this is like a week full worth of work just for a square. But look how good it looks. I know. Ash is pretty. Worth it. Do you think we should do a dark stain on it? Like a charcoal gray? Or should we do like a tan? No? What do you want to do? What if you do like a pretty walnut? Walnut? You know I could have just bought walnut. Why didn't you? Cuz it's going to cost like $2,000 in materials. Or like a pretty white oak color. All right. I'll let you sleep on it. All right, glue up time. I took the liberty of thinking ahead yesterday and I made some jigs for the shop. These are nice perfect squares. The idea is going to be because they're perfect 90°, we'll get them all together, put a bunch of glue in there, and I'll be able to clamp this up knowing this will be consistently nice and square, which will allow for me to attach the bottom, which I got a few ideas for. All righty now, we got our bottom ready to go. Got a bunch of pocket holes on the bottom. Got wood glue that we're going to throw on it. I'm going to put a little brace on the side so it doesn't drop all the way down so I can secure it level. Also, I'm really considering once I flip it over, put some wedges on the corners just because it's big, bulky, and I don't want it to kind of flex inward like that just to give a little reinforcement. I want this thing to be able to withstand freaking anything. Okay, so I got everything all sanded up. So, this is the stain part that's what we're coming to approaching. This is the problem more. to You're not going to do charcoal? I would love to do charcoal. I'm surprised you didn't just do it without me, my approval. I did two samples for you to look at. You tell me what you like. I like already one of them, but I want to hear what you say. So, here's one, here's the other one. Those are actually the only two stains that I have in the shop right now. Danish oil with light tinted walnut. This is semi-transparent walnut. The solid one is like too yellowy. I like this one. Yeah. Okay, go with this one. Well, no. I mean, if you like this one, I mean, it's You heard the Rock, paper, scissors. Okay. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. You won. Are you going to be okay with this? Yeah, it's still nice. It just to me it looks compared to like how pretty this is, it looks a little yellow. But I think when it's all done, maybe it won't be. I mean, it's yellow for sure, but it's I think it's pretty. Well, if you think about all the stuff outside I could always experiment by mixing the two together. Ooh, that's a good idea. Try it. Okay. That's like a happy in between. Yeah, I like that one. You like it? Now, before we start staining, we got to do two cuts. So, I kept going back and forth about trying to figure out if I wanted to have more of a bar like feel where this kind of sticks out more or more of a cabinet feel. And I strictly really don't know because I don't know if this is going to be stationary or I should put the wheels on and move around. Next thing, I already did a dry mock-up fit with the lift inside of it and the TV. So, I'm going to cut a inch and a half from the back and that's going to basically conceal this part, this edge. Then, I'm going to have about 6 and 3/4. That's the amount of the TV with the lift that's going to come out and the rest is going to be stationary so you can put your drink on it or what have you, maybe even a sound bar to get more sound to it. So, throw that up on the table saw real quick, chamfer the edges so it matches, and then we'll start staining. So, this part will be stationary. That's the bar you can put your drink on, maybe a sound bar. This part comes out to about where the TV is, this much off the bottom. All right, everything's done. Everything's sanded. I'm going to start staining. We're going to put a sealer on this thing. It's outside, so there's going to be UV rays. UV doesn't do well with clear coat. So, we're going to go with a varnish. This is a UV resistant from TotalBoat, not sponsored. The guys at Woodcraft were raving about it. They said you should use this. It's easy based on the instructions. You could roll it, you could brush it, you could spray it. That means, cuz it's water-based, you can dilute it. So, the way we're going to apply it is through my little TikTok shop HVLP sprayer. Diluted it about 20%. That's the maximum. Another thing, temperatures have to be at least 50° for it to work. So, I got my diesel heater here. I'm going to spray this, get out of here, close the garage door, and let this thing cure overnight. Let's go. I'm not going to lie, these particle sizes are way too big. Now, I know with this stuff it'll cure and settle overnight, but uh I feel like this thing needs more power to blow it all out of HVLP sprayer. An airless would be nice, but it's all gunked up. Today is assembly day. Everything's coming together. First order of business, drill a hole on the side to put our power bank or power strip down below cuz we're going to need to power both the lift and the TV and possibly the sound bar if we figure out a good alignment for it. Once that's all in place, then we'll start aligning all the top pieces and making sure everything is just leveled and just precise and straight. It's a big day for the brand. Real big day. Let's start. How thick is that? This is the maximum TV you can use on this cuz anything bigger than this, it won't get over your cabinet and it the cabinet can't be smaller cuz it has to fit this thing. So cool. That's awesome. So, I want to make sure that I have plenty of room when this thing comes down, but also not too much room where you can see behind it. Just err on the safe side, somewhere middle ground. Let me lower my TV here a little bit cuz I think it's tilting forward. Yeah, it's getting close. We got to pull it out just a little bit. That should be good. When it comes to attaching this stuff, uh I'm reminded of the days of like building dining room tables out of solid wood. You can't just secure it with a screw. You got to do like a washer on it so the wood can move with different temperatures. It expands and contracts side to side. So, here, because there's no room to get in and secure with little L brackets on the sides, I also need to think ahead that, well, in case the TV ever burns out on me, I I want to be able to replace it. What I'm going to do is I'm going to secure with brad nails on top, no wood glue. are light enough that when the wood wants to move, it won't warp and it'll move with it. And then, when this TV does burn out, I'll just be able to just lift the brad nails out, make my adjustments, change the TV, and pop it back in. So, if you have a better idea, I'd love to hear them, but that's what I got so far. This is the section that will come out with the TV. It just attaches to this bracket, fully adjustable. That's what I had to adjust. It was kind of cattywampus. But so, I want to get this picture perfect. So, I'll use the old tape trick. Put a piece of tape down here, put a piece of tape on the back, throw some CA glue, align it with this back part, and then I can make my micro adjustments, lift it, and then secure with screws from the bottom. At least that's the plan. Everything's lined up. Let's take this puppy outside. Guys, this thing came out incredible, I think. It's a giant TV, the cabinet's not too big, and it looks like the perfect place for it right here in the patio. And it's on casters, so we can wheel it around, maybe by the pool, or anywhere else. We can watch the game, we can watch all of our favorite shows anytime we want when we're in the backyard. Guys, thanks so much for watching this video. I am incredibly happy how this turned out. I love everything about it, specifically the size, and that we can also kind of use it as a little bar top. This is an awesome addition to the backyard. I hope you guys liked it. Maybe you can try it on your own. You can use different kind of methods that you want, not necessarily a fancy glue up like we did here. If you're new to the channel, make sure you subscribe. Don't miss any of the videos, and in the meantime, here's a video I think you might enjoy. See you.