Part 2: Cutting out.

Once the plans were drawn and I had a clear idea what I wanted to do - I set out to cut the wood.
The 4x8ft plywood panel was cut in half by homo depot.

I then had the horrible task of marking out the wood. I only marked out one panel as I put both panels together and cut them 'as one'.

I tested all the measurements with the monitor and the PC and just double checked I had enough space for everything. I am glad I did as I had not left enough space for the PC and had to make that section larger...

I purchased a new jig saw for cutting the panels together. I also purchased nice sharp progress Bosch blades.
See Jig Saw

Here are two cut pieces...

I had to make a decision to either use T-Moulding or just round off the edges.
The round off would be a risk, as any mistakes would really look bad.
T-Moulding looked like it could hide mistakes and look so much cooler also.
It would make the machine a little more hardy as well.

I got some samples from T-Moulding.com and tried them out. I ordered silver, gold, black and dark blue. The 3/4" blue strip won as I thought the blue would look nice with black, like pacman.

I knew that I would have to use the router to cut groves for T moulding, before I fitted everything - so I ordered a router. I went for the small Bosch one.

Router

Reviews were good and the price was less than the others. Just had to get 1/4" shaft routing bits for it now. Lowes seemed to have the better selection - but the bits are not cheep wherever you go.

The router came in handy for making sure the two panels were trimmed to be exactly the same shape. (I used a straight trimming bit).