Bob: MusiCom, at Little House, where we lived before getting this house.
MusiCom stands for Music Command, and is my invention of 1999, in San Diego, California, where I was living at the time. I needed a unified system to hold the various tools of my musical needs, and created this large construct out of two-by-fours and scavenged laminate board material. Various other items, mostly free, rounded its utility: plug strips, a monitor arm, 2-inch PVC sewer pipe and the like. Altogether it supports, a cassette deck, an 8-channel DAT recorder, a mixer, an electric piano, two amplifiers, two complete computer systems, a printer and a TV.
Nan: It is hard to believe we ever had this jumble of stuff setting in our kitchen.
Bob: MusiCom was originally built to go in a back room, and consequently lacked many
aesthetic traits. It was never meant to be prime-time. However, our new home has
only one logical place for it: the dining room. If I'm to have this wicked piece on
display, it better look as good as possible...
Bob: After tearing down this gal to nothing but screws and shelves, I was left with the backplane, a grid of two-by-fours and a two-by-two, this portion having been glued together originally. Here, the backplane has been transported to the garage, where it got a thorough sanding to remove nine years of dust, dirt and rough edges. I never expected to have the old girl on exhibit, and so I never finished it. In many ways I am completing a process that began almost ten years ago.
Nan: That's the trouble with accumulating a wife and house: You have to clean up your act. :)
That's all right, Bob deserves the best, and MusiCom can look much better than it has for
the last ten years.
Bob: We did a lot of hypothetical measuring in determining whether MusiCom would fit here in the dining room on the southeast wall, but, now that we actually have the backplane where we want it to go, it doesn't fit bad at all. This is gonna work just fine.
Nan: We orginally thought about placing this in the corner, but I realized that the center
support legs were almost the same width as the window frame, so with the angled cross-piece
partially removed to allow access to the window behind, it has found its intended home.
Bob: The screws in the backplane got snugged up, then mudded to level out the surface. Other imperfections were repaired, too. We're giving her a facelift. Part of the diagonal brace in the upper middle section has been removed as well, to leave less clutter in front of the window. This window doesn't have any great view at the moment, anyway.
Nan: The view from this window may someday be beautiful. Wouldn't it be nice if we
could purchase Rubber Duckie and turn it into a lawn?
Nan: I'll bet Bob never envisioned doing all this to MusiCom when he built it. From the first time I saw it, I knew it could look much better, but how do you tell a "dad" that his "child" is less than perfect? It took a lot of tact to bring about this transformation. By the way, I got to do all the priming and painting on this little girl.
Bob: The backplane and the rest of the uncolored parts get a coat of primer, in
anticipation of being painted in colors identical to those we've chosen for the
dining room. After all, MusiCom will be a permanent addition to our home.
Bob: The backplane is painted and mounted permanently in place with bats on the wall. Curtains behind add a touch of elegance.
Nan: Just the first step in transforming MusiCom. It was amazing to see it actually in
place.
Bob: All of the shelves are now in place, and the wires are being added. The color-coordinated pipes and legs in green really look nice.
Nan: It looks so much nicer here at Little Big House (that is our name for our new house). Of course, we have so much more room to disburse things, so it doesn't all have to set on MusiCom itself.
I did not know you could paint PVC pipe. I got a quick lesson in how to paint it.
The green legs blend right in with the walls, and make MusiCom somewhat civilized.
Nan: It's amazing how a little paint and some patience can take something merely utile and not so pretty, and at least give it a veneer of gentility.
Bob: The power strips are all in place and the equipment set on the shelves. Wires are
starting to snake to and fro, hither and thither.
Bob: The TV stand from Little House got torn apart and repurposed (partially) here as a new stand for my 27" Hitachi TV. I took the cabinet out and used the swivel on the base with the top shelf to make a tilted swivel on top of Musicom. The TV has two brackets in the back to keep it from tipping, thank you very much. Nan's 19" TV went to the sewing room, and the TV cabinet went on the wall in the bedroom. Musicom wiring is complete here, but we still have to lay our dining room carpet, which is rolled up on the floor in front of Musicom, so a bit of clutter is forming here right now. ;-}~
Nan: I know, I know, this TV looks like it's going to fall any second! It hasn't in all these months, so it most likely never will. Maybe we can get a nice flat-screen to set up there. Or, gosh, why didn't I think of this sooner: get a new BIG BIG (maybe even another BIG stuck in there) TV for the living room, move that 42-inch one to the bedroom, and then move the bedroom 32-incher to here. Now, if we only had some more money...
Here's how the dining room turned out...