As many of you who follow me know, I am no stranger to the occasional roadside find. So when my husband spotted this television armoire with a FREE sign on it, he naturally alerted me to the location.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune! I headed out with my trailer and met my husband at the location to load it. This is a Drexel solid wood armoire! It was then that I found out why it was free. It was GINORMOUS and weighed a GAZILLION pounds. No, seriously. I have NEVER worked on a piece this large or heavy. It actually didn’t even fit in my 8′ trailer. My husband, the owner, his friend, and I loaded it, strapped it on the best we could and I limped it home. OK, now what?
It sat in our house for YEARS while we tried to figure out what to do with it. Originally we thought of putting it in the finished basement as a display for my husband’s collectibles. Then I offered it to a friend for merchandising products. It was never the right fit, but I couldn’t let it go. Finally, my husband and I found a spot in our living room where it would physically fit, but we needed to make it visually fit. I had to break up the visual mass to make it less dominate. I also needed to refinish it in a way that matched our style aesthetically.
I disassembled it as much as I could and worked on it in chunks. I stripped and restained the crown and base in a gray-brown tone. I then used a color already in the room and painted the body, drawer, and doors a grey-green. I had stumbled upon this really cool tile at a local builder surplus store and knew that this unit was the perfect place to use it. I tiled the back wall and created a quilt-like backdrop.
Then we (hubby was a huge help with this part) cut out the panes in 4 of the 8 door panels so that you could see into the back wall. This was a project in and of itself, as each of those panes was about 3/4″ thick. It took a lot of sawing and sanding, but the end result was so worth it.
It now stands proudly in our living room, provides a ton of storage and visually blends into the room. It’s finally home.
