Old Music Cabinet Refresh

Happy Weekend Friends!

How has your week been? I finally got the stitches out of my knee on Thursday and it appears to be healing well. I still need to take it easy though. But that didn't stop me doing a bit of furniture rearranging today. You see, I needed to find a place for my recently acquired old music cabinet. 😍

And I had been feeling like I wasn't loving our living/dining areas lately. I needed to change things up a bit. I was watching Erica Mueller's Insta posts the other day where she suggested moving everything out of the room and then shopping your home to change things up and I was so inspired to do the same. 

And if you don't follow Erica, you totally have to! She is so awesome. 😊

I couldn't move all the furniture out, but I did drag it around a bit. 😂 I'm still restyling these rooms and I'll be sharing them shortly.  But in the meantime, let's take a look at my new music cabinet.

 

I found this little gem on Marketplace. It was local and I had been looking for something similar to the one I used to have and sold. I really regret selling the other one now. 😢 There are a few pieces of furniture I wish I'd kept. Good thing is I can keep an eye out for more pieces to replace the ones I miss.

Here is the front view. It has two doors and the cutest legs.

 

 

The inside has one shelf. It wasn't in the greatest shape so I planned to replace the shelf with new pine.

 

Here is the back view. It has this gorgeous wooden scroll work. Again, not in the greatest shape though.

 

This is the fabric that was hanging off the back. It literally fell off when I touched it. 

 

I decided to give the whole cabinet a sand to lighten it up a bit. The front and sides went well, but the top was a bit of a disaster.

 

When I started sanding I didn't realise there was a thin layer of wood veneer attached to the top and I actually sanded it down accidentally to the raw wood. So then I crazily thought it would be a good idea to peel the veneer layer off. Doh, doh, doh. I was scraping till my hand was so sore. Then I discovered there was a strip of wood on the top that was a totally different colour. I decided to give up the scraping and add a new top to the existing one. 

 

I grabbed some 12mm pine planks and my brown glaze and a walnut stain. I cut my pine planks to size, then started applying stain and glaze to create a colour similar to the rest of the cabinet. And it actually worked well! It was easier than scraping and looked a lot better too.

 

I've never attached a new top to old furniture so I started using wood glue which I spread over the top with a scraper. Then I clamped the boards the best I could. 

 

While I was waiting for my glue to dry, I tried out British Paints One Coat Clear on the door to see if it would change up the wood colour. I really liked the lighter tone. Thankfully, it was minimal.

 

After taking the clamps off the boards were lifting still and not flush. Call me OCD, but I wanted them flat. So I grabbed a hammer and nailed the boards down. I was going to putty over them but they gave it an old look so I left them. Lastly I gave the top coats of clear Timber Protect and one coat on all the sides and legs.  

 

I was pretty happy with the outcome. But the back hole was bugging me. 

 

Nothing that a patch of drop cloth and some hot glue couldn't fix. 😊

 

 

Yep, so much better.

 

 

And here are the new shelves inside. I decided to install new boards on the bottom as well so it all matched. I also used the stain and glaze matching technique for these boards. 

 

Deciding where to put it and what side to face out was the hardest part! The decorative wood on the back is beautiful, but the doors are on the front. In the end, and after moving some furniture around, I decided to put it next to my dining room buffet. 

 

I love having the extra space on top to decorate. I haven't decided what to put in it yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something. 😁

 

 

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. I'll be spending it doing a Spring room refresh. I'll look forward to sharing all the details next week. 

Take care and stay safe!