Saturday, January 17, 2015

Installing Kitchen Undercounter Radio

We have two radios in the kitchen.  One near the kitchen table.


 and a second one on the counter between the kitchen and the living room.  This one has a CD player.


Things work pretty well, but ...   The radio by the table has a very fickle power cord.  It's broken internally, and if it gets moved, the radio tends to lose power.  The other one has a multiple CD player, but we only use one, at most.  And the switch which selects radio or CD is flaky, and will cut down the volume of the speakers at random times.  Jostling the switch can get the volume back, but unpredictably.  Plus both radios are analog tuners, and it's difficult to tune them in well in all cases.

So I've been looking for a digital radio with a single CD player to replace them.  I happened to see the Sony ICF-CDK50 under counter AM/FM/CD kitchen clock radio.  It is rated very well as a radio, has a digital tuner, and a single CD player.  I bought it from Best Buy for $108.24.

We decided to mount it in the middle of the kitchen under the cabinets that hold the dishes.


This counter already has lights under it, so there is an outlet at the wall to provide power.  By being in the middle of the kitchen, we pretty well cover the entire kitchen with one radio.

First we need to remove the dishes.


There are little white plastic spacers provided that allow us to install the radio low enough to clear the skirt around the cabinet.  We needed the 2nd setting.


The radio is installed by drilling through the cabinet and using long #10 screws.  In addition to drilling thru the cabinet, we counter sink the screw heads.


Putting the radio up under the counter and screwing the screws thru the spacers into the holes for this purpose holds the radio up under the counter.


The power cord for this radio is just the right length (about 4 feet).  We got a CordMate C10 cord channel from Home Depot (about $5) to hold the cord up under the cabinet.  I trimmed it to only 4 feet long, and used it's self-adhesive tape to stick it under the cabinet and then put the cord in it.