I turned a bookshelf into a hidden home lab and it completely decluttered my office

I’d never recommend hiding your Wi-Fi router in a bookshelf, as that would likely lead to overheating and a weakened signal. But what about the rest of your networking gear? From network switches to smart home hubs and everything else that needs to be hardwired, that approach could certainly work. To see if it was possible, I decided to do it myself.

I’m in the early stages of hardwiring my home for Ethernet and I eventually want to install an in-wall networking cabinet. That way, all the cables can end up in one place. However, before I start cutting a large hole in my drywall and actually running cables from one side of my house to the other, I first wanted to move all of my networking gear and my Wi-Fi router to a more central location.

Up until now, my router was in our game room where our fiber internet connection comes into the house while all of my various switches and hubs were on a shelf in my office. To consolidate everything while putting my router higher up for a better signal, I decided to buy a tall bookshelf and make a few tweaks to it.

Here’s all the gear I used to do so and a few key home hacks that let me hide all the cables for a much cleaner look.

Just a few minor alterations

Instead of a standard Billy bookcase from IKEA, after a whole lot of research, I actually ended up getting a kitchen pantry cabinet for this project. While your standard bookshelf is certainly the cheapest way to pull off something like this, I chose the shelf I did specifically because it has doors on both the top and the bottom. That way, most of my gear will remain out of sight but I can quickly access it when I need to.

The only problem was that since this is a kitchen pantry cabinet and not an entertainment center, there weren’t any openings for running cables to my various devices. This is my cabinet after all, so I decided to modify it slightly to meet my needs. For less than $10, I picked up a four pack of desk grommets that came with the required hole saw drill attachment to make holes for them.

Although the sides and shelves are made from sturdy particle board, the back panel is made from thin laminate-faced fiberboard. I knew from experience that drilling through this stuff often leads to jagged splinters, and I wanted a professional finish. After consulting with Google Gemini, I followed its suggestion to use painter’s tape on both the front and back of the panel to hold the surface together while I drilled.

I was skeptical at first but after a bit of taping and drilling my first 2-inch hole, it worked like a charm. In total, I drilled four holes with one in each of the top compartments, one in the open middle section and one in the bottom compartment.

From there, it was just a matter of cleaning up the sawdust left from my drill and installing the grommets. Since the included hole saw drill bit was the perfect size for them, I just popped each grommet in one by one. This was my first time doing anything like this and though I still had a lot of work to do, I was already really impressed by how the first step of this project turned out.

With my holes drilled and my grommets installed, it was time to start putting everything in place and managing all of the various cables.

Raising my router (and my networking gear)

From the get go, I always planned to put my eero Max 7 mesh router on the top of the cabinet. Since there’s still a good two feet between the cabinet and the ceiling above it, my router has plenty of space for airflow. Likewise, I could use the back of the cabinet to hide the wires running down from it to the shelves holding my other networking gear and down to the ground where our fiber line comes in.

With my router installed up top, it was time to start getting everything ready for the cabinet’s upper and lower shelves. With several switches and hubs in the same compartment, I wanted a way to maximize the space there while also ensuring that these devices too got plenty of airflow.

To that end, I settled on a few monitor stands to do just that since I’m quite familiar with them from building my various desk setups. I got two sets of two stands: two with glass tops and two with metal tops with holes for — you guessed it — improved airflow.

Given that you want to keep anything metal as far away from your router as possible to avoid signal interference, I planned to use the glass stands in the top compartments and the metal ones in the bottom compartments. Though my router is on top of the cabinet, the hub for my Philips Hue smart lights sends out a wireless signal to the bulbs all around my home. By using a stand with a glass top, that signal can go out of the cabinet without being disrupted.

As you can see in the picture above, I used the stands to separate all of the devices instead of just stacking them on top of one another. I have one 2.5 Gigabit network switch in the middle and a gigabit one below it. My router is connected to the 2.5 Gigabit one first and then to the gigabit one but once I finish wiring my home for Ethernet, I’m going to put a 10 Gigabit switch inside my in-wall networking cabinet.

So far, everything is relatively cool in there, though I do open the doors from time to time to bring in some fresh air and for another reason which I’ll get to in a bit. With the top cabinet and all of my networking devices connected and powered on, it was time to move to the middle section of the cabinet.

Multi-charging and faster downloads

With so many tablets, phones and other devices around, I decided to dedicate the lower exposed shelf solely to charging. I had a multi-device charging station years ago when I lived in Korea, so I picked one up at a discount during Amazon’s Big Spring Sale event. The charging station I got is a 400W one with USB-C ports in the middle and USB-A ones on either side. The USB-C ports in the very center can deliver up to 100W of power while the USB-A ports on the sides deliver up to 20W.

When the cabinet doors are closed, the charging station is the only thing you can see. Since we often entertain in our game room, I figured this was an easy way to guide anyone whose phone was about to die to a charger without them having to ask if we had one.

Although you can only see a USB-C cable coming out of the smaller 1-inch grommet on the shelf above this one (I picked up a few more smaller ones for future projects), it’s not for charging. Instead, it’s actually a download station and I have to give credit to How to Geek’s Sydney Butler for the idea. You see, on the other end of that USB-C cable there’s actually a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet adapter tucked behind the cabinet and an Ethernet cable running up to the network switch above it.

Wi-Fi has certainly improved quite a lot over the years. However, sometimes you just need to download a lot of large files or a huge game really quickly and don’t want to wait. When that happens, I just walk over to my cabinet, plug in the device in question and start downloading over a faster hardwired connection instead of on Wi-Fi. So far, I’ve used it to quickly download a few Switch 2 games but it could also be really useful for uploading large files to my NAS on the end table next to it.

With my networking gear safely stowed away and my charging needs more than met, it was time for one last addition to my cabinet that turned it from a standard piece of furniture into a hidden home lab.

A PC to tie it all together

When I first finished building the cabinet, I stood in front of it and that’s when I realized that the upper open shelf was at the exact height that I have one of the best standing desks raised to when working while standing. I couldn’t let a coincidence like this go to waste, so I decided to put a PC in the cabinet.

Having a computer integrated into the cabinet makes it very easy to check on the status of my home network but it’s also handy when downloading files and adding them to my NAS. Since a computer in a bookshelf would look slightly out of place, I decided to put a portable monitor inside the cabinet at the top and one of the best mini PCs on a shelf down below. My keyboard and mini trackball mouse are out in the open in the photo above but when I’m not using the computer, I stow them away in front of my portable monitor.

In the bottom compartments of my cabinet, I have the ONT box that converts our fiber line into an Ethernet one and I used those metal shelves to create some extra space above the power strip I have plugged in on that shelf. While I initially planned on just putting one mini PC here, I ended up putting two. The one on the right is an old Minisforum machine I picked up a few years back for personal use while the one on the left is the Minix Elite EU715-AI I reviewed earlier this year.

Now I absolutely need to keep the cabinet doors open when using my Minisforum machine which I found out the hard way when it started to get hot after prolonged use. With the Minix one though, I can actually keep it running 24/7 behind closed doors without it overheating because it doesn’t have any moving parts and features a massive integrated heatsink.

I have a full-featured USB-C cable running up to the portable monitor above as well as a mini HDMI to HDMI one too. That way, I can have two devices connected at any given time. Having a computer here also makes a lot of sense as my UGreen NAS is located right next to the cabinet.

About that portable Blu-Ray drive under the shelf. I recently inherited crates and crates of old Blu-Rays and DVDs from my mother-in-law and plan on digitizing them before putting them on my NAS. Given I don’t want to disrupt my main desk when doing so, I figured ripping all of those movies right here in the cabinet would make the most sense.

I do have some extra space on the very bottom shelf and right now, I’m using that to store the extra metal monitor stand I didn’t end up using along with a separate keyboard with an integrated trackpad for my personal machine. I might think of something to add there later but for now, it’s a great place for extra storage.

Ready for my next big project

It took me longer than I’d like to admit, mainly due to finding the right cabinet for this project, but my hidden home lab is armed and fully operational. I’ve been checking the ambient temperatures behind those closed cabinet doors periodically and I’m happy to report that there’s no sign of overheating yet.

As for my office, I now have a whole lot more room for all of my various gadgets since all of my networking gear is out of that room and contained nicely within the cabinet. My Wi-Fi speeds are about the same with my main mesh router lifted up but I do like how it’s now in a place where my son or my dogs for that matter won’t be able to mess with it.

Next comes the even harder part, cutting out a large rectangular hole in the wall next to my hidden home lab to install that in-wall networking cabinet. Once that’s done and I’ve wired up a few outlets inside it to power that 10 Gigabit network switch, I can get started on the really fun part: crawling around my attic to run cables and putting even more holes in the wall.

While I’m still nervous about wiring my entire home for Ethernet, at least now I know that once I do, I’ll be able to run a single cable to my mesh router on top of my cabinet and know that everything from my switches and hubs to the mini PCs inside and my NAS next to it will be fully connected and ready to go.

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