Before & After: From Console TV to Console Table

Do you remember the days when televisions came in these giant wood consoles? Now that we hang our flat screens on the wall, it may be hard to imagine that televisions were furniture. Nowadays these old console sets end up getting set out for the garbage man. Here’s a clever re-use of one of these anachronisms:

Beckie, from the site Infarrantly Creative, picked up an old console television the night before trash day and turned it into a cute new table!

It’s absolutely amazing to me that televisions were built with a giant wooden cabinet surrounding them — and I’m even old enough to remember watching reruns of The Brady Bunch in front of one of them! It’s not uncommon to see them sitting out on the curb so I think this re-use is brilliant.

After removing the picture tube and wires from the inside of the cabinet, Beckie (with the assistance of a helpful friend) cut the cabinet in half. Now the piece looked more like a table and less like a cabinet. To stabilize the new table, Beckie cut the feet off the half she removed and attached them to the back of the table.

To clean up the inside of the cabinet, Beckie used luan wood to line it and then added a shelf as well. After filling in holes and cracks, Beckie sprayed the table with primer and then painted it with Dutch Boy’s Lake Champlain, followed by a glaze.

I could see this as a nifty little bookcase, too!

Check out the full posts on this cool console television re-use on Beckie’s blog, Infarrantly Creative:
• Roadkill Rescue: Vintage TV
• Roadkill Rescue: Console Table Out of Vintage Television

Images: Infarrantly Creative