The PLUG

OK, not much to report as far as progress goes, unfortunately. I'm having a bit of trouble with the monitor mount. Attaching the monitor to the tabletop is proving to be far more difficult than I thought it would be...

As I've said plenty of times throughout this process, I want to make this thing look as "clean" as possible and not homemade in any way other than its uniqueness. One of the problems I encountered was getting everything to power on and off at the touch of a button. This was accomplished rather nicely by using a Smart Strip power supply.

Once I figured out where to place it within the cabinet, I had to figure out where to drill the hole on the outside for the power cord. I decided on the lower left side of the cabinet underneath the hinge for the access door. This simple decision turned out to be a bigger problem than I had ever envisioned.

I carefully measured the plug every which way I could and determined that it was 1" in diameter. So, in order to make this thing look "finished" I needed to drill a 1" hole in the proper location, feed the cord through the hole and then put a grommet of some kind around the hole to thread the cord through so it will look nice. Simple, right? Wrong.

The first problem I encountered was finding a 1" grommet. I looked all around at Office Max, Staples and Home Depot for something but the best they could do was a 2" grommet and it was going to be huge. I decided online would be my best bet and I eventually found one at Modern Office Interiors for approximately $10 ($3.75 + shipping). Kind of a rip off but at this point I just want to finish.

As I was waiting for the part to arrive I drilled the 1" hole using a hole saw attachment for my drill. When I tried to thread the power cord through the opening, it didn't fit. The hole was about 1/16" too small and there was no way to redrill it (and the grommet was already on the way). I ended up taking a razor and shaving off the rubber around the plug prongs until I could squeeze it through. I was able to get it through after about 10 minutes of tweaking. Whew!

A few days later the grommet arrived and I was anxious to get it installed, however I quickly realized that a 1" grommet only has a 1-7/8" interior diameter - there was no way to get the power cord through the grommet opening! I wanted to scream! Fortunately, a solution quickly presented itself. I thought about it and decided to take a razor and cut the grommet down the side. There was just enough play in the plastic to open up the grommet wide enough to slip the power cord in there. With the grommet cover in place you can't even see where the cut was made. Hopefully the pictures provide enough detail.



I think it came out nice in the end and just how I initially pictured it in my head. I just have to touch up a little tearout from drilling the hole with some leftover blue stain (that's what I get for using an old hole saw!). It was worth the trouble!

The lesson learned for all of this is no matter how much planning you do, there are always going to be things that pop up you didn't think about. It was frustrating but it was very satisfying to be able to come up with a solution.

Thanks for looking!