I love the variety here. Mine is also a little different, I think. I watched every youtube video and read every thread I could find about building one of these because I had 0 woodworking experience. But it seems that most of the videos I watched showed people throwing a solid block of wood on top of their fridge and calling it good. For efficiency of time I think that is just fine but I wanted mine to be truly insulated for better electrical efficiency and hopefully a longer lasting appliance, with a double layer of wood and a hollowed out interior filled with insulation.
I have 8 taps, yes 8 (!) taps!
1 tap is set up for high psi for Saison or wheat beers and such, 5 are standard co2 taps, and 2 are nitro taps. I absolutely love the final result and it is a great sense of pride to pour my own beer that I made from a kegerator that I also designed and made. And with 8 taps I can keep the variety high, and volume high for parties etc.
Now with so many taps my main problem is the beer will generally go stale before the kegs kick. No big deal, I just dump it. I'd rather have the variety than the volume, and simply having 8 taps doesn't mean I have to use them all!
Craigslist buy, about $100
Immediately separated top from main freezer and painted the exterior of both black:
Sizing out wood on newly painted kegerator:
Workbench setup:
First dovetail attempt. This was going to be aesthetic for the exterior, but it ended up being a structural interior dovetail, and in the end, not necessary to have dovetailed at all. good practice though even though it is obviously not so perfect.
Jointing the wood into a box shape to fit the top of the kegerator:
Basic test fit before adding the other parts to the interior for insulation:
Second part of interior added. At this point I had an exterior and an interior, and a hollow middle which would be filled with insulation:
All pieces now cut and finished, including the two side trim pieces and the front oak piece. Time to stain!
These are the two side trim pieces which I use for aesthetics. They cover the side of the kegerator and hide the ugly white insulation strip that is inherent to the fridge itself. So when you pour yourself a beer all you see is nicely stained wood around the whole visible front and sides. By now my dovetails were getting pretty decent:
Final fit, and permanently glued to the kegerator:
This is the hollow place where the insulation would go:
Insulation installed:
Not pictured, I glued some trim on top of the insulation so that I had a solid wood top, with no insulation visible or even exposed to the air at all. I then reinstalled the top of the fridge by drilling into the wood collar.
Tap holes drilled, and test fitting some sweet ass holiday lights!
More or less final version, by now I have tap handles on everything:
Interior look: