LACK Video Console shelf with hidden cables

Materials: Wood, fabric, LACK shelves

Description: Console shelf with hidden cables

Since I moved to my apartment, I wanted to hook up all of my consoles. I grew up in the 80s, played a lot with my Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and I feel still in the mood to play the old Mario, Mega Man, Zelda or A boy and his blob.

So I wanted a shelf where I can leave all my consoles hooked up to the TV and be able to play every game at every time. The big issue was only, that all consoles need at least two cables, one for power and one for the video/audio. With the 8 consoles which I want to connect, that makes 16 ugly cables which have be hidden somewhere.

There are different possibilities to hide cables. But if you want to have a minimal design for the shelf, there is not much directly available. Due to the fact that I didn't want to cut new shelves too much, I came to this solution:

I've built a frame out of wood (simple roof batten) with the width of one small LACK shelf, drilled some holes to screw the shelf to the wall and I predrilled the holes for the actual shelves. The whole thing was covered than with fabric. At every position where a shelf will be, I made a cut to the fabric to insert the cables, the lowermost gets a very big cut to ensure that every cable from all consoles can exit the construction. In addition, the screws for the very small LACK shelves from IKEA were screwed inside.

The most difficult part is to get all the cables inside. You can do this while the shelf is not mounted on the wall and sort them inside or try to get them through while hanging on the wall.

If the cables are through the cuts, the LACK shelves are attached and the consoles can be connected.

~ .holger, Hamburg, Germany