For her birthday, my brother gave our Mom a flat-screen TV. Unfortunately, it didn’t work with her old TV stand and the size of stand she wanted wasn’t easily found unless you had an unlimited budget. Derek said, no worries Ma, we’ll make you one!
All we had were the dimensions and some general likes and dislikes. Would it be natural wood? Would we build it? Like so many of these little projects we work on, we didn’t have to wait long for happenstance to give us a direction. Derek picked up a solid wood cabinet at Goodwill for $15. It wasn’t the prettiest thing we had ever seen, but it was intact and already had a hole cut in the back for cords from electronics. One of the bottom doors is just for show. It doesn’t open. Both bottom drawers had black felt over thin pieces of wood. That would never do. But it was a terrific find and a great start.
Next, we needed a longer top to accommodate the TV. We saw an ad on Kijiji for live edge wood so I made an appointment to check it out. The guy makes high-end furniture and either didn’t want to sell me the pieces I wanted or had the others priced out of our budget. We had a nice chat, but I didn’t think we’d make a deal until I was almost out the door. Leaning against the wall was a thick piece of walnut that someone had tried to refinish and did a poor job on. It was mine for a steal. The stain and finish drips and blobs would have to be sanded off and the process started again. Load it in the vehicle, my good man!
Derek sanded off the mess on the walnut. I bought a piece of beadboard and he cut and fit it into the bottom doors. He screwed the top onto the cabinet and removed the door pulls. I painted the whole thing with Van Gogh chalk paint in a colour called Balsamic. It took three coats to cover well, but the beauty of chalk paint is there’s no sanding or priming to do. It’s forgiving of imperfections. Once it dried, I waxed and buffed it for a tough finish. I even found a knob for the bottom door that perfectly matched the original pulls. We’re pretty happy with the result. We delivered it to Mom on Thanksgiving and she seemed pretty happy with it too!
Now her TV has a home and her electronics will stay nicely tucked away until she needs them.
We have two more projects on deck. One is whatever Derek plans to do with an oval piece of live edge Poplar I recently bought. The other is to make or refinish some sort of end table. And… who knows what’s next?
Gorgeous! You guys are SO talented, and obviously work so well together. Nicely done.