Old Meets New

I have finally completed the french dresser - turned t.v. console. Just to refresh your memory, it looked like this when I purchased it.

Some of it was particle board, the drawer liners are a heavier cardboard, and the front faces were plastic! The date on the back was stamped 1976. Vintage. It was time to do some experimenting.

First it was cleaned, primed and painted.

Then a piece of MDF was measured, cut and fitted to slide into where the top drawer should go. My husband did the larger cuts with a circular saw, and we cut out the small square notches with my new Dremel. About this time I am thinking how nice it would be to own a jigsaw.

Then more filing and sanding down of the edge of  the MDF to try and make it flush with the dresser trim.  Next I glued the MDF  into place with some carpenter's glue, and put two screws in the spots where the drawer track used to be.  I clamped the edges together, neglected to take a picture and let it dry.  Then when it was dry, I caulked the heck out of it to try and make it mesh with the dresser. Again, neglecting to take a picture. Use your imagination.

More paint. Rustoleum's Heirloom White, by the way.

Then came glazing with a combination of Benjamin Moore's Studio Finishes Latex Glaze 405, mixed with a little bit of brown acrylic paint to really bring out the details in the drawers and hardware.

Glazing is fun. It doesn't have to be perfect, you brush and you wipe down with a damp rag until you get the desired effect.

Then after that dries, you pull out your handy dandy round tool thing that cuts holes in doors so you can install a doorknob - on doors that is, not on your new dresser turned console. The handy, dandy round drilling tool also happens to  work well for drilling a hole ( or three)  in the back of your new console to thread all of the wires and cables through.

Finally, you drag it into the house, and hook everything back up... cursing in the process and wondering why there are so many cables and cords... hoping you put everything back in the right place... wondering what you are going to do with the Bose sub woofer, and decide it will have to stay down at the side until you can come up with a better way to incorporate it with this old dresser/modern electronics.

We take our t.v. watching very serious here... shamelessly.

So here it is, the grand reveal...

Still dealing with lots of cords, obviously visible in the picture. We don't have the option of mounting the t.v. on the wall, since it is in a corner next to the fireplace. However, it is a huge improvement over our previous set up of a small oak t.v. stand that we purchased here in town 16 years ago.  I am loving the drawers and having another place to put all of our DVD's.  It has freed up a lot of space in my home office closet, to store other "stuff."

Next reveal will be the little (formerly pink) table. That one turned out to be A LOT more work than I had anticipated.

I'm linking up to The Shabby Nest:Frugal Friday

Funky Junk Interiors Saturday Nite Special