Purrlings: Tuning in for something a bit different

My family is a family of stuff. My maternal grandparents were borderline hoarders (which side of the border depends on your perspective, and what period of time you spent at which of their houses). There were a themes in their hoarding beyond what things might be of use (including, inexplicably, jars of mercury that I remember sitting in the living room). My grandma was a great collector: of books, Hummels, depression glass . . . and I think I caught her bug. She had a plaque on her wall stating, “I have so many books I want to read, I’ll never die.” Well, I’m certainly carrying on that tradition, and with her trusty knitting needles I’m following along in that hobby as well. Now I’m getting into antiques as well. It started with a few bits of furniture, and is slowly branching out into other areas. I’m keeping a firm handle on it though, keeping to items that I know I will use or repurpose so that they are useable. There may not be any Antiques Roadshows in my future, but I have things that I love and that I use every day, like my desk, and old steamer trunk I use as a storage space and coffee table, a side table (which is an old sewing machine table, with the sewing machine [broken beyond reasonable repair] removed). (I hope to post some pictures of these later – you can sort of see the side table in previous posts.)

The newest edition is an old radio cabinet, which is soon to be the greatest sewing cabinet ever. A random find on Craigslist, the cabinet was a mere $10. I was semi-inspired by the efforts of Jen and John at Epbot with their radio cabinet. Shoot, all of her posts inspire me, and I feel like my brain has been belching out new ideas since I found her blog. My radio would never be steampunk worthy, it’s from the 1930s rather than the Victorian era, but I knew there was potential for another purpose.

Step 1 was picking up the cabinet and doing some serious dusting, once, of course, the cats thoroughly inspected the new interloper.

After recovering from the subsequent allergy attack, step 2 including removing extraneous (and mysterious) bits of wood. Then I carefully took out the old fabric, which was glued to a piece of thick cardboard that was far beyond saving. Before that was thrown away I made a pattern of it on a piece of newspaper.

Step 3 was a bit of thinking. The overall structure of the cabinet was still sound, even at 70+ years old. The wood, although in many places veneer, was pretty decent, just a bit scratched and beaten up. There was almost one shelf in the inside, the remnants of where the radio used to sit. After some talking with my dad, a woodworker, we had a sort-of plan. Add a bottom, maybe a second shelf, and either attach the cabinet to a base and back so it would swing out to be an accessible storage unit, or figure out how to add wheels or slides to the bottom so no back or hinges were needed. The next step for me would be to head to the fabric store to find something to replace the speaker panel.