Woodworkin’ in the Shed and Rescuing a Vintage Buffet

  When we got the new carpet in the living room we took a look at our tired cheap old plain entertainment center and decided it was time to let it go. We had bought it in a rush after the last time the house flooded and we were ready for a change. See, we are saving up for a flat screen TV as a family X-mas present and knew we wanted a vintage, long, real wood, something to go under it and also knowing our living room is HUGE and, well, *HUGE HUGE*, scale was something to think about. Selling our entertainment center proved harder than we thought and we ended up giving the sidepiece to a friend and free-cycling the main unit. No one is buying entertainment centers nowadays.

On Craigslist (duh! where else??) we looked at oodles of buffets and sideboards and record players and finally found a kinda banged up buffet that had been languishing on CL for over a month. Asking price was 80 and he took 40. It was at his friend’s house and the friends wife (or girlfriend, I cannot recall) wanted it outta the spare bedroom. Woo-hoo! Score! We loaded it into the truck and squealed the tires as we drove away (not really, but I was all smile-y and thrilled and doing the happy dance in my seat –while Pete rolled his eyes at me but thankfully he saw the potential in the piece, too!)

It sat in the shed for a couple of month and then Pete got to work. Sanding and sanding and more sanding, teaching the kids to sand by hand (child labor laws do not apply at our house!), gluing veneer and puttying the patches that were too far gone to resuscitate. Then he used a maple wiping stain and a bunch of clear spray finishing cans that I always pick up at yard sales and cleaned the handles – which are kinda like shells and are either Bakelite or some vintage plastic and it looks great!

We moved it into the house and I love it and think it would look great in the dining room if we decide it does not work in the living room! It matches the table and looks great under the dining room window! But for now the plan is to have it in the living room.

Stay tuned for the other piece of furniture Pete is refinishing at the moment – it was a craigslist freebie!! A vintage radio/record player cabinet!! The plan is to put the two pieces side by side (they do not match perfectly but we are hoping they will look good together) and the radio cabinet will house the electronics – the cabinets are a smidge wider than the buffet’s cabinets- and the buffet will house the DVD’s, games, etc and the dream TV will look nice hanging on the wall above the two gorgeously refinished vintage rescued pieces.