Furniture makeover: From dresser to TV stand

In the corner of our living room is our giant television, which I hate having so prominently displayed. But we like to watch it, so…it stays. That doesn’t mean we can’t make it look just a little nicer, though, with a pretty and colorful TV stand.

Painting furniture is how I first got into DIY, since in the early days I didn’t want to spend time working on projects that we couldn’t take with us when we eventually moved from an apartment to a house. Of course I quickly lost that focus and started doing increasingly large projects in my apartment, from painting, to installing board-and-batten, to tiling a backsplash. But furniture painting has always been a big part of my DIY repertoire, and I figured I’d take this opportunity to share a bit about one of my favorite projects to-date: the coral TV stand I repurposed from a craiglist dresser.

Originally in our apartment, we had this lovely corner TV unit:

It was functional in that it held the TV off the floor, but it was not pulling its weight in the design department. But hunting for a replacement, I discovered that awesome/fun/colorful TV stands are few and far between. I wanted a TV stand with legs because I knew that being able to see the floor would make the space look bigger, so that further limited my options.

After much soul-searching and pinteresting, I decided that the perfect piece would be a small dresser in an antique style that I could paint a bold color. I spent about two months checking craigslist every day for such a treasure. It took much longer than I’d hoped, but I refused to get something that didn’t match the style and size I wanted. I was about to give up, when finally I spotted it.

The plan was to sand it, prime it, and paint it a rich coral color. Anyone who knows me was probably shocked that I wasn’t painting it turquoise. But the living room needed something both bold and warm.

To make it work for our purposes, first I needed to do a few things: remove the top two drawers (that’s where we planned to put our cable box, DVD player, etc), and drill holes in the back for the cords to go through.

Removing the drawers meant that I’d need to lay down some sort of shelf in the space previously occupied by the drawers to create a surface for the cable box etc. to sit on. I was kind of at a loss since I didn’t really want to buy and cut sheets of wood, but then I realized that the drawers I removed were obviously already the right size, so if I could detach the bottom of each drawer that would be the right size for covering each opening.

After inspecting the construction of the drawers, I guessed that if I could pry the right nails out then I’d actually be able to just slide the bottoms of the drawers out without totally dismantling them.

I’m not sure why I felt I needed two intact, bottomless drawers, but I had some vague notion of using them in a future project. Yeah, Sam loves to hear stuff like that. “Honey, where do you think I can store these two bottomless drawers while I think about how I can turn them into an art project of some sort?” “Um, how about the trash area outside?” Actually, he never says that, he just smiles patiently. But I suspect that may be what he’s thinking, perhaps while googling diagnostic tests for hoarders. (But I actually used them, not 12 hours later, in the gallery wall in our apartment bedroom. HA!)

In any case, the drawer bottoms fit over the openings perfectly. On the left you can see the open holes, and the right the drawer bottoms are laid over the holes.

Next I drilled holes in the back for cord management. I used a 1.5″ drill bit that I had on hand to drill a bunch of holes, and then a hand saw to cut a larger blobby shape. It was not exactly professional-looking, but no one will ever see the holes anyway since they are blocked by our devices.

Then I removed the drawer knobs, gave the dresser and drawer fronts a light sanding, and applied a coat of primer (zinsser oil-based primer, which eliminates the need to fully sand off the existing finish, I just needed to scruff it up a little). I did two coats of primer on the top since that will get the most wear and tear.

After the primer, it was time for two four even coats of “Rich Coral” (Ace), using the paint conditioner Floetrol to slow drying time (which reduces the appearance of brush strokes). Yeah, way more coats than I expected (usually two is enough), probably because I did a bad job with the primer in a few spots so the dark wood was still visible. Every time I cut corners, I end up having to spend more time down the road and am reminded that cutting corners is bad. Besides, if I wanted it to be fast, why wouldn’t I just cut the biggest corner of all and buy a finished TV stand?

When the paint had dried, I applied a coat of Minwax clear gloss poly to protect the finish.

A few final finishing touches included:

1) Removing the casters (wheels) from the legs — they didn’t roll very well and I’d planned on removing them all along after I finished painting (they were handy during the painting phase, because I could easily paint the legs without them then sticking to the dropcloth). I almost gave up on this step because the wheels weren’t coming off as easily as I’d expected and I was afraid I’d break something, but eHow’s “How to remove the wheels of an antique dresser” gave me the confidence I needed to finally pry them off.

2) Putting the drawer pulls back on. I thought about getting new pulls, but I actually really like the way the black pops against the coral. A friend suggested glass pulls, which I’d also been mulling, but sometimes I have to remind myself that a boy lives here and I want him to feel at home as well. I already painted the TV stand a variation on pink, I’d better rein myself in on the details.

3) Procuring some attractive contact paper to cover the two pieces of wood (drawer bottoms) I was using to cover the holes in the top (I thought this would be more fun than painting them the same color as the rest of the dresser):

The cloth across the top is a scarf that my mother-in-law gave me — I was planning on making a runner for the top with some gray linen fabric, but then I thought how perfectly this scarf complemented the color scheme and couldn’t resist.

4) Screwing a wire basket to the back of the dresser to use for storing the power strip and excess cords — since the dresser has legs, the whole floor is visible and we can’t just stuff all the cords behind it like we did with the old TV stand. I found the basket in the kitchen/storage section of our local hardware store and thought it was perfect for the job. Yes it looks terrifying back here, but none of that is visible from the front!

Here it is finished, compared to what we had before and the original dresser:

Three years later, I still smile whenever I look at the TV stand. That’s one of my favorite things about DIY — every project comes with a story and a lot of pride (and memories of the more disastrous elements, like the blobby holes in the back of the dresser and how many coats of paint it took, tend to fade away quickly).

Oh, and if there are any furniture history buffs out there reading this: below is the label on the back of the dresser (which I didn’t paint). I couldn’t find out much about the Caldwell Furniture Company with some basic googling (except discovering that Lenoir, NC was home to a whole lot of furniture manufacturing in the 1900s), but I’d love to know if there’s an interesting history!

(Sharing at Miss Mustard Seed, Tip Junkie, Link Party Palooza, and Two Uses Tuesday– and FEATURED at My Repurposed Life and Small Town Rambler)