Lee H Pappas

DIY on a shoestring

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by

leehp
in ,

Building a Candy Counter

A step-by-step DIY candy counter guide for your home theater that appeared in Home Theater Builder magazine. We pushed this as a project that someone could build in two days and on a budget. I enlisted my neighbor whose hobby is woodworking and he did an aging job, as you can see. I wanted a mini version of a movie theater candy counter so that meant including a small window on top of the counter to look down unto the cabinet. The article included every step of the process – we never had readers contact us because they were confused.

We built the cabinet itself from an inexpensive one we purchased at Home Depot and it was heavily modified and hacked to our plan. The thick tempered glass windows and doors came from a friend who owned a glass company, same with shelves. We used a nice blue Formica for the covering and even included a small refrigerator in the back along with storage for popcorn supplies! The candy and popcorn were donated by a candy distributor and a popcorn machine reseller. The article was fairly detailed, enough that we never received and questions or confusion. The 9-page guide was step-by-step with 30 images, a detailed list of parts, costs and sources. Even links on where to buy bulk candy. Delivering everything the reader could need or want is going the extra step.
The finished candy counter looked great, didn’t take up a lot of space and added some realism to a home theater. Made Saturday night feel like a real movie night!
My neighbor Rich really knows his stuff when it comes to woodworking. He basically built this in his head before we even started. Rich did 90% of the work on construction, I took the photos and held pieces or wood strips. We ended up holding a contest and selling the finished product to one of our readers in NY state.
No details were left behind. The goal of every DIY article was to provide more than what the reader expected. We used a combination of photos and relied heavily on illustrations to make each step clear.