Project: Dresser Turned Media Console, Part 1

My mom loved thrift store furniture finds, which is probably why I do too.  During my final year of college, in which I was preparing a voice recital, taking lots of classes, and preparing to marry Jay, my mom took it upon herself to furnish my apartment from thrift stores.

Ikea would have been a more chic option if we'd had it, but we got things that did the trick.  A looooooooong couch that took up an entire living room wall (and took off some of the doorjamb paint getting in), a swivel chair, a little round table for the kitchen, and a nine-drawer dresser for the one bedroom.

Were these pieces pretty?  No.  But they did the job!  In fact, the dresser has been doing the job for the last 12 years; when we moved out of that apartment into our first house, it became a "buffet" in our living room, storing linens, infrequently-used kitchen utensils, and whatever else we managed to cram in.

A vacuum cleaner salesman commented it looked like I lived in a grandma's house.  Touche.

On special occasions, it became an extension of the kitchen for spreading out food or a platform for decor.

See the corner with the folding chairs and table? That corner was our dining room. The kitchen is on the other side of the buffet wall...and about the same dimensions.

 After kids started arriving, wicker baskets (from Ikea this time) were added underneath to hide toys.

G looks for an escaped toy.

When we bought our current home, it continued to serve a similar function, also standing in our--much larger--living room.

Hidden under a tablecloth for the tea party goodies! Also present is the china cabinet in its '80s brass glory.

And when the kids started school, it housed text books and work sheets, plus card games, linens, and even books.

But over this last year, a few things changed: Namely, I got more thrift store furniture.  The buffet drawers slowly emptied as I found new homes for things, and I began to wonder if this highly functional albeit highly dated piece of furniture had outlived its use.

Meanwhile, here's what our living room's media nook looked like.

This cabinet was purchased new (shock) from Ikea when we needed something lockable to keep electronics safe from little boys.

Works just fine, but check out all that wasted space on the sides!  And then on August 11th at about 3 a.m., inspiration struck.  By 9:00 a.m., Jay was at work, the kids were at school, I had a borrowed Sawzall, and my brilliant idea began to take shape.

First, I unplugged and lugged everything out of the media nook...and then wiped down the walls and prepped for paint.  Because why wouldn't I add painting a few walls to my day's activities?

After getting the first coat of paint on, I started with the dresser.  First, drawers out.

Next, I removed the back, which was thankfully a fairly flimsy piece of plywood stapled on.  The back of a hammer took care of it.

After unscrewing greasy drawer tracks from key spots, I got out the saw and created a sub-woofer home.  This actually took more work than I thought it wood would, and after getting a blade stuck and breaking it getting it unstuck in an attempt to trim off a certain edge, I called it "good enough" and committed to cleaning up the edges when I paint it.  Yes, painting coming in Part 2.  What, you thought I enjoy the finish on this thing?

I found a scrap of sturdy OSB in the garage and cut it to fit across the bottom of the sub-woofer shelf, lending extra support.

I can't remember if at this point I was able to put the second coat of paint on the walls, or if it was time to pick up the boys from school.  I do remember that I skipped my afternoon nap to keep working on my living room project.  I do not remember if I cooked dinner.  I can guarantee that I ate dinner, though.

Jay--who was completely astonished and in awe of this brilliant idea that I'd executed by myself without consulting him first--helped me get the heavy pieces moved around and the electronics plugged back in.  I have a recollection of adjusting speaker heights after the kids had gone to bed, so that suggests that I wasn't finished until after 8:00, but this is what I ended up with:

Pretty nifty, eh?  Look how perfectly it fits in this space!  And check out what I did with three of the removed drawers for under-console storage space.  Jay also happened to think that was brilliant.

In Part 2 of this project, the dresser-turned-buffet-turned-console will get a coat or four of lovely white paint and new drawer pulls.  I'll also rearrange the drawers a bit so that the frames are more contiguous.

So what do you think?  Are there pieces of furniture you've repurposed over the years?