I built mine with new parts. Check out my partner below for a huge selection of pre-made kegerators and parts for building your own:

• CO2 cylinder: ($80) I bought a 10lb. CO2 cylinder because has it has enough CO2 for about 10 kegs and is much easier to carry around for when I take the setup (sans fridge!) to friend's parties. It only costs $7 to get a refill at welding supply stores.

 
• Dual Gauge Regulator:  ($60) A single gauge regulator only shows you the pressure on the regulated (output) side of the regulator while a dual gauge shows you the pressure inside the CO2 cylinder so you can see when it is about to run out of CO2, although you still don't get much warning.

 
• CO2 tap: ($40) This connects to the bunghole of the keg to pressure it and to allow beer to be drawn out. There are many different types depending on the type of kegs you're going to use but most American beers along with most imports use the same type of tap.

 
• Faucet: ($25) This is the part on the outside of the fridge that you actually draw the beer from. Look for one with a stainless steel lever inside it and polished ball for smoother action.

 
• Shank: ($15) This is just a threaded metal bar which attaches to the faucet and actually goes through the door of the fridge. On the opposite of the faucet end you connect the beer line from the keg using a nipple if the shank doesn't come with one.

 
• Tubing & Hardware: ($20) You'll need tubing to connect the output of the regulator to the keg and beer output of the keg to the shank. Get 4 feet of thin tubing (3/16") for the line between the keg and the shank to drop the pressure so that the beer doesn't foam excessively. I don't know why beer or food grade tubing with their thicker walls seem to foam less than the generic stuff at a hardware store.  You'll want to run about 15psi of pressure into the keg to keep the beer carbonated but you only want the faucet pressure to be about 3-4 psi to prevent foaming. Using several feet of thin tubing drops the pressure appropriately.  The air line I used is 1/4", you don't want a lot of pressure drop here so that the output gauge on the regulator is close to what the actual keg pressure is.


I've found that different beers work better with different pressures and temperatures.  Most light beers work best with the temperature cold (30F) and the pressure fairly high (18psi) while darker beers are better around 45F and 12psi.  Experiment and find what works best for your tastes.
 

• Used or new refrigerator or freezer: (varies, $90 for the used fridge, $250 for the new chest freezer) It's nicer but a little harder to find a single door fridge. Just make sure the one you get is big enough to hold everything. Some people recommend keeping the CO2 cylinder outside the fridge and drilling a hole to run the tubing inside to protect the regulator but I don't know if that's really necessary or not since I've received varying opinions on it. One nice thing about a double door (top/bottom) fridge is that you can keep your frosty mugs in the freezer section.  I spent about $250 for a new chest freezer on the new kegerator since I wanted the added space a chest freezer gives me.
  
  If you get a freezer you'll need to convert it to a fridge.  There are 2 ways to do this.  First you can replace the thermostat with the thermostat from a fridge.  The thermostat just shorts its 2 connections together when the unit needs to cool.  It's a simple replacement.  The other choice is an external thermostat.  You plug your freezer into the external thermostat and plug the thermostat into the wall.  This is slightly easier but you need to find a way to get the bulb for the thermostat inside the freezer.  Refridgerator thermostats run about $30 and external thermostats are about $50.  Follow the link at the bottom of this page to buy one.

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This is the latest kegerator.  I converted this chest freezer to just refridgerate with a new thermostat.  It holds 2 commercial kegs of beer and has room for 2 soda kegs of homebrew (hence the 4 faucets).  Unfortunately I now have the drain just running into a bucket inside but it's not hard to maintain.

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Here's the inside of the new kegerator.  The home soda kegs fit in front of the commercial kegs.

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Here's the inside of my old kegerator. I had to use that big coil thermostat because this was originally a freezer and I had to convert it to a refrigerator.

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It was in my utility room next to my washing machine.  The nice thing about having it here is that I can run the drain to the washing machine drain.

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This was the inside with a 5 gallon soda keg added to hold my homebrew.

One last thing, you can buy a little plastic picnic faucet for about $4 and this will allow you to use your setup anywhere you want. You just disconnect the tubing where it connects to the shank (behind the faucet) and attach the picnic faucet. Now you can take the CO2 cylinder, tap, and picnic faucet to keg parties and use them there. Feel free to email me if you have any questions. 

I built mine with new parts. Check out my partner below for a huge selection of pre-made kegerators and parts for building your own:

A link on How to Build a Kegerator Including Instructions.

Anatomy of a Kegerator - Video

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