Saturday, May 12, 2012

Craigslist Find - Vintage TV Cabinet Project

I've been trawling estate sales and Craigslist lately, and the stuff keeps coming in the door.  I'll do a post soon to show off some of the small finds, but today I picked up a couple of goodies that are pretty exciting, so this post will focus on one of them, a vintage TV cabinet.


I drove 45 minutes to look over this Craigslist item, advertised by a great guy who, like me (and maybe you?), has too much mid century stuff and needs to thin the herd a little.  He's planning to move out of state and while he's taking a lot with him, not everything will go.  This TV cabinet was one thing he was willing to part with, and man, am I glad!

I've been looking for something like this for a while, but I always seemed to miss out.  Not this time.  This old Admiral TV cabinet still has the speaker cloth intact and nice, and the glass and frame were in place.



The cherry colored cabinet has nicks and scratches and wear, and the original knobs are long gone, but overall I figured since the price was good I could revive it and use it for displaying something (sorry, no fish tank will go in here, mainly because we don't need more pets to care for!!).



Anyway, when I got this home I cleaned it up and hit it with some Howards Restore-A-Finish, then Howards Feed-N-Wax to fill in the nicks and scratches and shine it up.  The front glass frame came off easily so I cleaned up the glass, dusted everything, waxed the frame and re-installed it.  Next I painted the inside of the set black, and added a panel in back to black out the inside of the cabinet.



A box makes a good stand to hold the legs while the paint is drying

Legs painted, shined, and reinstalled


I cleaned, painted, and shined up the legs and put it all back together.  I already had the rabbit ears so they went on top.  (Sadly, I sold the Zebra TV lamp I picked up last year, so I'll have to look for another lamp or something to go on top of the cabinet with the antenna.)


I'm loving the way this looks in the corner of the living room.

17 comments:

  1. I want to turn one of these into a bathroom vanity...

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow! What great finds! I'm totally jealous. (Maybe if I'd look as hard and spend more I could get some of the awesome stuff you're finding.) Everything looks great together! BTW, I saw your tiered lamp on FB, love it, I want one so bad!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Awesome! I'm glad I found a cabinet with a door - I gutted the TV bits from inside (though kept the knobs and controls as it's actually a console with radio/phonograph) and put a 26" LCD in there. With the door shut, it looks just like it fell out of the 50s!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hmmm...Maybe stick an old CRT monitor in there with maybe an old PC with maybe a DVD drive showing old movies...maybe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've thought about it - I'd like to get my Predicta set up to run old black and white shows

      Delete
  6. Looks great! When I was a newlywed in the late 60s, we took an old Zenith cabinet model TV and turned it into a bar. Good memories!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've already got two bars though, if I built another one I might start getting AA referrals

      Delete
  7. UA - what a great find! There's a pin on my Pinterest board that shows how someone put a light in one of these and made a pretty cool bar - http://pinterest.com/pin/62628251038249265/ just an idea!

    ReplyDelete
  8. You did a great restoration job and I love how you paired it with the starburst clock.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow- you work really quick and really good! It looks fantastic!! It was great meeting you and I'm so happy the TV found a good home! That TV was one of the first vintage things I got off craigslist, years ago...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was thrilled to give it a good home. You've got a great eye for things. I'm looking forward to doing a post about the other item soon. I was fortunate to have some scrap wood and paint, the rest was just a few hours of cleaning and finishing.

      Delete