My First DIY Project - Part 4

So after I fiddled around with the paint and finally figured out how I wanted it to look, I went ahead with my second and third coats, as well as making any touch-ups in areas that I messed up.

Now that all the pieces are painted, it was time to reassemble the whole cabinet and add any finishing touches that I wanted. This did not go smoothly at all.

My first problem was realized after installing the board for the radio and turntable. It was about 1/4 of an inch thicker than the original piece that I removed. This meant that the radio would not attach properly and essentially wasn't going to work. I then spent about 4 hours carving into the plywood in order to make the board thinner around the bottom of the hole for the radio, without making the hole any bigger.

Finally, after hours of laying on my back on the garage floor, getting sawdust in my eyes, nose, and mouth I finally got the radio to fit in perfectly.

Look! It works!!

Here is the nearly completed cabinet, reassembled and in the garage. I bought new handles for the faux doors from Home Depot because the old ones are ugly and cheap looking. Plus the silver handles go nicely with the charcoal and cream colour scheme. Originally, I had wanted to get a cream/white cloth to go behind the grills on the front, covering the speaker holes, but I couldn't find any speaker cloth that wasn't black, and it looks fine as-is.

I drilled a hole into the board to hide all the cables for the turn table. Also, I realized that there is a "Tape In/Out" plug on the back of the cabinet, meaning that I can now play music from an iPod/cell phone/anything with a headphone jack, which is pretty sweet. 

So, that's basically the whole thing. It seems as if I'm finished with this project. For now. I have plans to fill the inside of the cabinet with egg cartons (to help with acoustics) and in the distant future I'm thinking of turning it into a full entertainment unit to use up the wasted interior space (put in a Blu-Ray player, Xbox, etc. and wall mount a tv above the cabinet). Thanks for following along! If I have any updates I'll definitely share them. Finally, if you enjoyed this little project, or think the finished product looks nice, please feel free to Pin it, tweet it, Facebook it, or whatever other social media thingies there are.

 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

My First DIY Project - Part 3

So now that the cabinet has been stripped of all electronic bits and has been sanded down, I get to choose my paint colours and really start to have fun. I chose charcoal-ish black and heavy cream 2-in-1 paint and primer with a semi-gloss finish. But before I could start painting, I wanted to get a piece cut for the interior of the cabinet, where the radio and turntable will sit. This is that piece.

Made from beautiful laminate plywood...yay!

My talents with a jigsaw are.... less than good, so the hole for the radio came out a little wonky, but it fit inside perfectly and hid the crappy cut really nicely.

Next I started fiddling around with the paint, trying to figure out how I wanted it to look.

Painting was starting to seem easy and was actually rather fun. I should have known that something terrible was on its way.

Thanks Hagrid

Boy, these posts just seem to be getting more and more pictures, with fewer and fewer words.... Stay tuned for Part 4, coming soon!

Links to the other stages!!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4

My First DIY Project - Part 2

This stage is the dismantling and figuring-out-how-this-thing-is-put-together stage, plus sanding. I have realized that my plan for installing doors on the front is very ambitious and not going to happen. I have also learned that much of the wood in the cabinet is laminate particle board, so I will be painting and not staining.

I knocked out the main board under the lid with some difficulty. It was held in with a combination of wood glue, screws, and staples making for an hour filled with sweat and cursing.

I got help sanding from my girlfriend, so that I had someone other than myself to blame if everything went horribly wrong. Thankfully it didn't.

The helper

With the help of two power sanders we managed to get all the big areas done in a few hours without a lot of trouble.

The trim, on the other hand, had to be done by hand and that took a while. With the cabinet stripped and sanded, the next step is to pick paint colours and cut an interior board.

Here are the links to the other stages of this project

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

My First DIY Project - Part 1

Wouldn't it be funny to watch someone with essentially zero carpentry skills attempt to fumble their way through a mildly complex furniture update/remodelling? To stand by as they ask stupid questions like, "What the hell is that thing?" "A chisel is a flat head screwdriver, right?" and "Where's the chainsaw?"

Well, now you can do just that! ..... Sort of. I'll be posting mildly humorous (to me, anyways) updates showing each stage of my attempt to turn an old stereo cabinet (that I got at a garage sale 4 years ago for $20) into something that is fairly pleasant to look at, so that my parents finally stop suggesting that it would be better served as feed for a very hungry wood chipper. The cabinet originally featured a very basic turntable, an AM/FM radio, and a small storage area for your records, as well as an outrageous amount of wasted interior space and several dead spiders.

No, I don't own any coasters. Why do you ask?

As you can see, I've taken great care of my investment. I think only 80% of that water damage occurred since I took ownership of this piece. I got rid of the original turntable as soon as I got the cabinet home. It barely worked, wasn't level, and the needle on it was done. I installed a turntable that belonged to my grandma, but had difficulty getting it to work consistently. Now I have a brand new Audio Technica turntable that I'm going to be installing into the cabinet, although I'm not quite sure how yet.

The first step in my project is to strip the cabinet of all the electronic pieces. This was not as easy as I had hoped. The wires would not detach from the main hub on the radio, nor from the speakers. The speakers are screwed in from the front, beneath those lovely (plastic) grills and under a speaker cloth that is pasted onto the front board. To make matters worse, I can't detach the grills on the left side of the cabinet because the sleeve for holding your records prevents me from accessing those screws. At this point, I have been working on this project for about 1 hour and have already considered getting the chainsaw numerous times. I decided to put the radio and all its electronic components in a plastic bag for protection and to just work around it for now.

I think that I have figured out how the whole thing is held together and have decided that to do anything meaningful with this cabinet, I'm going to have to knock out the main piece under the lid of the cabinet, design a new layout for the radio and turntable, and cut a new board. This includes making cuts to hold my turntable, the radio, and any storage I may want to add in there.

I'm also considering what should be done with the wasted space inside. I'd like to convert the two middle plastic grills on the front into cupboard doors, but it doesn't seem likely. I'm willing to take some suggestions on what could be done with that.

The radio: post-op

All the wasted interior space

Here are the links to the other stages of this project

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4