Goodwill Stereo Cabinet Makeover

Once upon a time, about 7 years ago, I found a stereo cabinet at the Goodwill for $7.50 and I bought it for David as a birthday gift. It had a radio, 8 track player and turntable, all of which still worked. It mostly lived out in the garage to provide some tunes for the frequent ping pong games that were played there.

Witness the splendor of the house back when it was a bachelor pad.

When David moved into this house, it spent a short time in the living room, then got bumped out the garage again and there it has sat for the last 4 years or so. When the living room turned into a dining room, I decided it once again had a spot inside. The only problem was that it wasn't terribly attractive.  I wanted to remove the chunky trim on the bottom and add some nice mid-century legs. However, when I flipped over the cabinet I found that not only was the trim not removable, there wasn't even a bottom to attach any legs to. Instead, the solution I came up with was to paint it, but what color?
 

I first tried a seafoam green that I had a free sample pot of. I painted just the panels and planned to leave the outside wood tone. However, this color looked really awful under tungsten lighting.

So then I decided to paint the panels white. This was much more agreeable, but still lacking something. I left it this way for a while, so I could ponder my options. Then Cait gave me the idea of painting the exterior yellow and when she shared her painted lantern project, I knew just what shade of yellow I wanted.

I masked off the white areas with newspaper and got to spraying. But I ran into a slight problem.

The paint wouldn't stick to the fake wood. After some googling, I realized I should have used a primer made for glossy surfaces first.

So I got back on track with a couple coats of oil based primer.

And the paint adhered like a dream. Next up was to swap out that old fabric covering the speakers with something a little fresher and less textured.

I removed the back, along with several screws from the panel that the speakers are attached to. Aaaaand it wouldn't budge. Not even a slight wiggle. I would have had to completely rip the whole thing apart to get at the fabric, so I decided to just live with it.

And live with it, I am.

I love how the yellow fits into the dining room, and I especially love being able to listen to all my records on it.

So there you have it, a make-over 7 years in the making!