How to Build a Wall-Mounted Mid-Century Modern TV Cabinet

One of the things I always tell people is that paying attention to wood grain is what separates an okay piece of furniture from a great one. Before I even touched a saw on this project.  For this Mid Century Modern TV Cabinet, I spent time laying out the boards and studying the grain, seeing how it moves, which direction it runs, and how neighboring boards would look next to each other once everything was glued up.

Milling and Layout

Once I had a sense of how I wanted the grain to flow, I rough-cut the boards to length and got into the milling process. Since this is a modern design, I was deliberate about avoiding sapwood. Sapwood gives wood a more rustic character, which is great for some projects, but for a clean, minimalist mid-century look, I didn’t want to include it. Any boards that had a lot of sapwood I couldn’t work around, I turned face-in so they’d end up on the inside of the cabinet where you’d never see them.

When I ran the boards through the planer, I leaned toward taking more off the sapwood face than the heartwood side, which is the opposite of what most people are taught. Conventional wisdom says to take an even amount off each face. But since sapwood is less stable than heartwood, I’ve found that favoring the sapwood side doesn’t cause any flatness issues, and it lets me remove more of that material while keeping more of the good stuff.  That’s an attention to detail that is better than big-box design centers.

Glue-Up

The panel glue-ups were straightforward, long-grain to long-grain joints. I used floating tenons, not for strength here, but just to keep everything aligned while clamping. With big, long panels, they’re a lifesaver for preventing boards from sliding around when the glue gets slippery.

I always leave a little extra width on these glued-up panels. That way, once the glue is dry, I can run one edge across the jointer for a fresh reference surface and then rip the panel to final width at the table saw. It guarantees everything is square, parallel, and exactly where it needs to be.

Cutting Parts to Length

For cutting parts to the final length, I ran into a small issue: my miter gauge was a bit short for these longer pieces. My workaround was to clamp a stop block to the fence. The key with this method is making sure the stop block is set back far enough that by the time the blade reaches the wood, the cut end has already cleared the block. That way, there’s no chance of anything getting pinched between the fence and the blade.

For the miter cuts, I wanted table-saw-accurate miters rather than anything done by hand. I used the same glue block technique I’ve used on past projects — just a block attached to the workpiece to give it more surface area to ride along the fence on these long, awkward parts.

Decorative Back Bevel

Before assembly, I added a small decorative back bevel to all the parts. This is a subtle detail, but it catches the light in a way that really defines the edges of the piece. When you’re routing or cutting near the fence on something like this, an auxiliary fence is your friend; it gives a place for the cutoff to fall away cleanly instead of getting kicked back at you.

Mortising and Joinery

True to mid-century modern form, the whole cabinet is held together with floating tenons. I worked my way around all the parts, plunging mortises, using a scrap piece of plywood clamped down as a reference surface for the ones in the middle of boards where I didn’t have a good edge to register off. A good vice with wide jaws made this part much easier — you need solid clamping power and a stable reference when doing this many mortises.

For the mitered corners, I added floating tenons there too, which gives the joint a lot more strength than a plain glued miter.

Test Fitting and Clamping Setup

Even though I drew this whole thing in CAD and had all my measurements, I always do a dry test fit before any glue touches anything. It lets me verify everything goes together square and snug, and more importantly, it helps me figure out the order of operations for clamping. Once you’ve spread glue, you don’t want to be standing there trying to figure out which clamp goes where — that’s how you end up with a twisted cabinet.

For clamping the miters, I glued on some clamping blocks at 45 degrees using CA glue. With the block at 45, my clamps pull at 90 degrees to the miter face, which is exactly what you want for a tight joint. CA glue is brittle enough that a tap with a hammer pops the blocks right off afterward, and any residue sands away easily.

I glued it up in subassemblies, starting with the end divider first. Let that tack up, scraped off the squeeze-out at the corners, and then moved on to the full assembly.

Dado for the French Cleat and Back Panel

With the main case together, I needed to cut a dado around the inside back edge. This dado is what holds the French cleat and the back panel, so the wall behind your TV is hidden instead of visible around the edges of the cabinet.

To avoid tearout on this cut, I scored along the layout lines with a marking knife before routing. That severs the wood fibers along the cut line so the router has a clean edge to work up to. Because I was routing along a narrow edge of the assembled case, I also made a custom base plate for my router to give it a bigger footprint and prevent any tipping. I took several shallow passes until I reached full depth, then cleaned up the corners with a chisel since the router bit leaves a radius.

Back Frame and French Cleat

Before fitting the back into the case, I assembled the back frame and French cleat as a subassembly. The pieces were long enough that I needed to use clamp extenders — two bar clamps linked together through slotted connectors. It’s a handy trick when you don’t own a clamp long enough for the job.

The French cleat itself is about a half inch thick, which lets it tuck behind the main frame and stay completely hidden. Once glued and clamped to the back of the frame, it sits in a small recess where the wall-mounted cleat will hook in. From the front, you’d never know it’s there.

Fitting the back panel into the case was the moment of truth. It got a little hung up going in — I won’t pretend I wasn’t holding my breath — but it seated perfectly.

Decorative Shelves

The last bit of detail work was the decorative shelves on the end of the cabinet. I used wenge as an accent wood for these, which has a beautiful dark grain with natural black streaks running through it.

The shelves wrap around the front of the divider, so I needed to cut a notch where they meet the corner. I started the notch at the table saw and finished it at the bandsaw to get a clean interior 90-degree corner — the table saw can’t get all the way into an inside corner cleanly.

The shelves sit in dados cut into the side panel. I pre-finished all the parts before gluing them in and taped off the glue areas, so I’d have a clean bond. A couple of brad nails secured the back of each shelf since there’s no dado back there — the shelf just runs to the wall. I filled the nail holes with black filler, which disappears completely into the natural black streaks in the wenge.

And that was it. The whole piece was mounted to the wall and came out exactly the way I had it drawn. The wenge shelves against the main wood make a nice contrast, the grain lines up cleanly across the panels, and all that miter work paid off with tight, crisp corners.  This was a great alternative to furniture from the Denver Design Center.