Wine Cooler as Lagering Cabinet/Kegerator?

Has anyone thought about using a wine cooler as a lagering cabinet or a kegerator?
There are a bunch of them made by Danby that are fairly reasonably priced.
http://www.danby.com/en/productInfo.asp?dept=0010



I think they would have a couple of advantages over a mini-fridge.
1. They are designed to hold temperatures of 42-58 degrees, so there's no need for an external temperature controller.
2. They are pretty freakin' quiet.
3. They look nice so my wife wouldn't mind it sitting in the kitchen or living room.
4. You can display your wares with the cool glass doors. If you don't want to see what's inside, you could easily frost the glass.

The only problem I see with using one as a kegerator is that they look like they have controls on top, so you'd have to be very careful putting the tap in.

For lagering, I think it would be perfect.

Opinions?

yeah they are sweet. Everything but the glass doors.

Not a bad idea. I didn't look at the site as I'm having a slow connection day. What sort of prices are they talking?

They don't sell them on the website, but I saw the one pictured above (holds 35 bottles of wine) at Target for $120. It's more expensive than an eBay bought mini-fridge, but it's actually designed for holding a warmer temp, and they look nice.

Lagering of beers is done at 30-34*F, not the temperature range these wine cabinets run at. It would be OK for the fermentation phase though.

Ahh... My mistake. I thought lagering was done in the low forties.

Oh, well. They may still make a nice kegerator.

make sure you get internal measurements from one of these before you buy it. You might be unpleasantly surprised when you find out that your carboy or keg won't fit inside.

Notice how the bottles at the bottom are sideways? Right behind these will be a 'hump' of plastic that covers the compressor that this thing uses. You would have to put your kegs or carboys on TOP of that hump, which means you have about 8 less usable inches of height as you might expect.

This is the same reason that those little mini-fridges don't work for fermentation chambers... the compressor hump renders them too short to hold a carboy.

-walker