Day 18 - It'll Be All White on the Night

The spec for the speakers was I wanted to be able to control the volume without going inside the cabinet or wiring up special things, the satellites small enough to fit in the speaker area and to have a sub-woofer with a bit of bass to be a little bit better than standard 2.0 PC speakers and to be able to easily make the speaker protrude from the kick-plate if necessary.

The speakers arrived (Logitech S220), very cheap ones but they really sound rather nice.  The satellites are about 18cm by 8cm. On the speaker grill I'll cut two holes 10cm by 4cm which cover the speaker grill that you can see then with the router recess from the inside leaving about 2mm. I can then mount the speakers so they are almost flush with the cabinet (showing only the speaker grill) without taking them apart.

The little dial you see is the volume (and headphone/mic), which I'll mount under the control panel on the sloping side so it's not that visible, but usable. All the cables seem long enough, though I may have to cut and extend the cable from the sub-woofer to the satellites. For the sub-woofer I haven't decided what to do but you can see the speaker is to the right (the hole on the front is the air in). I'll see how it sounds and in the worst case I'll cut a hole in the front kick-plate for the side speaker to fit through.

I primed the wood with the first two coats (leaving it overnight). While the MDF was smooth, it had an uneven texture so I sanded it down. First with 600grit then with 1200 grid - these are very fine but I figured the smoother I make the bare wood the better. Then they had a wipe clean to remove grease and dust and were ready for priming.

I used the MDF primer/undercoat I mentioned earlier (http://negnegneg.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/day-11-almost-ready-for-priming-i.html) and from reading online the process was: using a foam gloss roller (even though it's water based) I loaded it with paint (but just enough to be covered) then the primer/undercoat was rolled on continuously until the paint ran out (i.e. not continuously reloading), finishing in light vertical strokes ensuring no visible overlaps.

Most of the panels took one go and the side panel and one of the back ones took a few re-loads after running dry. The other thing was to not go over the paint, i.e. literally put one coat on.

After a night drying (it's quick drying so probably only takes a few hours) the finish was quite rough and so I used wet and dry 240 grit (which is still quite smooth) and the result was quite smooth ready for the second coat.

If you look at the pictures (click to zoom) the side panel on the left has one coat, the other has two (it's because I had to fill a few holes so no painting until the filler had dried).  The second coat went on much quicker and used a load less paint. The edges (where the MDF had been cut) is also covered and there is no expansion or other problems you might get from cut wood.

The second coat looks very nice. When that's dry I'll move up to 600 grit and repeat. I've used about half the primer (it is a 1 litre tin, which should be enough for any cabinet) so the third coat I'll probably limit to the areas visible (side panel, kick-panel, speaker panel, bottom of the control panel) and that will get a 1200 grit sanding ready for painting.

I've found some oil (well solvent) based black which is matt and that will do the centre sections and I'll try my hand at rolling (in the same way as the primer). If it's not that good, I'll sand it down and spray it.