Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

Counting down the days until the maiden voyage – tomorrow morning (Thursday), will be 2 days, or possibly 1 day. Needing to burn off remaining accumulated vacation days before they might disappear (or might not – the HR folks were not sure), Malcolm asked for Friday off as a vacation day, which would give us an extra day to get from here to Arkansas. Given all the rainy, stormy weather forecast for the Southeast the next few days, it might be wise to take an extra day.

There was progress on the surround sound system install this evening, as well as a couple of setbacks. First of all, we stopped at Home Depot on Malcolm’s lunch break and picked up some wood and screws to build a cubby for the hole where the old sound system was located. When Malcolm got back to work, he was blessed with an extra right angle power cord for the receiver to keep it from pushing out so far.

Malcolm cut the wood up into the required sizes at the house using the table saw, and helped Val by moving some laundry she had left in the washer over to the dryer. After work, a quick stop by the house by Malcolm to get the laundry and then on to the trailer for dinner. After dinner, we went to Lowes and WalMart to pick up some stain and a couple other tools. Malcolm had cut the sides of the box just a hair too tall to fit into the hole, so rather than running all the way home to do a quick shave using the table saw, we bought an inexpensive wood plane at WalMart.

We bought stain at Lowes based on matching the sample chips there against a picture of the project from last night that Malcolm still had on his phone. As you’ll see shortly, we couldn’t have picked a better match. Here are some pics that Val took of the progress this evening.

The opening where the old stereo used to reside had two spacers to bring the standard 12 3/4″ cabinet opening down to a 7 3/4″ wide opening. Malcolm removed those two spacers to open the hole up.

Side spacers removed.

Here are the side spacers laying on the floor.

Side spacers.

Once the insert was expertly assembled by Malcolm, using his awesome woodworking skills (ahem), he is shown here putting adhesive wood veneer on the front edges of the insert. You just line the stuff up and use a clothes iron to heat it up, melting the glue on the back, then press it firmly onto the wood. Once cool, just trim excess with a sharp knife. Really dressed up the edges of the wood since it is plywood.

Applying edging.

Here is the insert just pressed into the hole. It will be held in with four screws drilled into the sides and into the cabinet face once done. This allows it to be pulled out for wiring access, when needed. The top remains open for cooling purposes and to get wiring to the top shelf of the insert. It looks a little crooked in this picture because it is not screwed in. Also, notice the almost exact color match.

Test fit.

The backwards progress was buying an RCA cord with too long of a strain relief on it (same issue we had with the power cord) and finding that one of our HDMI cables also suffers the same malady. We’ll have to shop for lower profile examples of those two cords tomorrow, then wrap up the installation tomorrow night. Stay tuned.