January 2019 update.

Ok, so it's been awhile. Where am I at, and/or what have I been doing? Here's a couple visual clues:

 The finished TV wall, with all cabling routed inside the wall.... 

And the 1452, as it sits today!

I'm not done by any means, but I have been busy!

After putting all of the furniture back in place and completing the installation of the TV and cabling, I hauled the cabinet up into the Family Room, more for a "Let's see what it looks like!" reason than any other. After all, it's been almost 9 full years since I bought it, and my curiosity level was pretty high.  

But of course a bare cabinet wasn't good enough, so I brought out some of the re-chromed trim pieces and installed them "temporarily" (yeah, right!):

And of course since I had gone this far, may as well add the back trim panel:

It was at this point that I began to realize that while having things re-chromed makes them really pretty, chrome also adds thickness to whatever substrate it is applied to. Why is this important? Case in point: In the picture above, the dome glass frame needs to be installed between the two "arms" protruding out the top, and this frame is "indexed" by two screw and a locating dowel. After chroming, the opening hole in this frame measured 0.179 inches:

 But the pins that go into these holes measured 0.191 inches!

As much as I hated to do it, I had to drill-out both holes to make them slightly larger. After that I was able to install the dome glass (seen here from the back side):

But adding the dome glass to the cabinet when the side glass pieces weren't installed wasn't a very good idea (thankfully no damage was done), so I took everything apart:

Installed the side glass, and then re-installed the top and dome glass. The results at this point:

Note that the (semi-finished) door is installed. Now, I don't have any pictures of this, but reassembling the chrome on the door was a major PITA, thanks to the thickness of the chrome. I don't mean for this to sound like I'm complaining about the quality of the chrome, as it's absolutely beautiful, but I was completely unaware that, A) Chrome adds thickness, and B) These door pieces are a very tight, almost "exact", fit! I spent hours... literally... hours gently grinding down the back side of some of this chrome so that I could get the door trim panels to fit together perfectly.

But it was worth it!

(Note to self: Maybe next time don't have Johnny do a "Show Car" finish on these parts.)

And now that the cabinet and door were together, of course I just had to install the OEM waffle glass, colored light diffuser, and the wiring harness for the door lamp!

A few quick things before I end. First, years ago I ordered a 3-piece set of replacement trim panels for the lower part of the door, as the OEM pieces were completely rotted-out, and before installing them I thought it would be a good idea to have them polished-up.

Bad idea! Before polishing they all lay-down nice and flat. After polishing, however....well..."not so much"!

In fact, they "oil canned" so bad that the Base Trim Moulding which holds these down (front lower edge of the door) was beginning to show signs of stress even as I was tightening it down. Thankfully Victory Glass had one set left. (And as of right now, they don't know when they are going to have this back in-stock, if ever.)

Secondly, I had ordered two new fluorescent bulbs and starters a few months back (one for the door, the other for the dome), but when I went to rewire the door light I saw in the wiring diagram that the door bulb ("Program Light") was originally "White" in color, while the dome glass was Spec'd as "Daylight". So I ordered another set of bulbs.

Lastly, I had to order another set of Walnut vinyl decals for the door, as I somehow managed to scratch the living (deleted!) out of it! Not sure how this happened, but IMO this stuff is fragile! I may look into applying a thin clear coat of some sort in the near future.