Fireplace Mantel that hides cable box/dvd player/other electronics

I have searched high and low all around the planet and can't find a tutorial for anything like this. I would LOOOOVE to know how we should go about building this.

In our living room we have a tv mounted on top of our brick fireplace with a mantel. That mantel is just your basic, flat, wooden mantel. On top of that mantel is where our blu ray player, wii, and cable box live - disgusting cords and flashy lights and all. It drives me NUTS!! I want to build a new mantel that stores/hides all of that stuff INSIDE of it and then have the front flip down (or up) when we want to watch tv and when we're not using any of that stuff, it can just be flipped up (or down) and no one would even know that stuff was in there ...