For a long time we had been using a media cabinet from Home Decorators under our TV that was part of a 3-piece set (2 pieces of which I’m currently using in the dining room). It was solid in the front so if you wanted to watch TVΒ you had to manually open the cabinet, which isn’t a huge deal but to be honest drove us nuts. I know there are kits out there to remedy this but I was ready for a change. It had no history or provenance, and it was one of those things I bought too quickly when we moved into our house. Lesson learned.
IΒ wanted to replace the Β with something vintage like a dresser that I could repurpose but never found anything that was quite right. We have a very non-traditional floor plan in our living room with the media center coming right off of the entryway door and the TV mounted fairly high on the wall, so the piece had to be short in width, narrow in depth, and a little tall. After months of searching, I stumbled upon this vintage 1940s mahogany glass front bookcase from a moving sale on Craigslist.
After getting the dimensions, I knew it would be the perfect size for our media center/entryway and just deep enough to house our cable box. So I quickly sold the Home Decorators cabinet and raced to pick the bookcaseΒ up from a little old lady in the suburbs. It was originally in a mahogany wood, which is not a color of wood that I love.
Inspired by this beautiful bookcase, I decided to paint the exterior and shelves of the cabinet Sherwin Williams Black Magic, a soft black color, and the interior back of the walls Benjamin Moore Palladian Blue, a light and soft blue-green color (but had it matched at Sherwin Williams to save me a trip).
source: Georgica Pond via House of Jade Interiors
As with any DIY project, there were a few mishaps along the way, including some miscommunication about the location of the hole to thread the media cords through, and sticky toddler fingerprints of BLACK PAINT on the new white sofa, haha. Thankfully the hole was patched up and the sofa cushion washed upΒ and all is good now. Phew.
After using aΒ door knob drill bit to drill a new hole for media,Β I styled it with all of myΒ blue and white pottery, which were previously in an open and very unsafe place for Oliver. What can I say, I have a weakness for pretty and fragile glass items, I have a little bit of granny in me. Now everything is on display but covered safely beyond the reach of Oliver’s fingers while the glass front allows us to access the cable box with the remote control. I also replaced the knobs with crystal ones from Anthropologie that I just had on hand from another project. I think the projection is a little too deep and I would love a more spherical glass knobΒ but these are fine for now. I am thrilled with how it turned out and am even happier that the piece is functional too. Even my husband admitted he liked it. I love how the piece adds patina and warmth, whichΒ are only qualities that you can get with age.
I wish there was wa way to hide those cords more but they’re so obnoxiously long it’s difficult to corral them together. Not a huge deal because they’re not that visible from the room anyway.
How cute are these blue and green vintage books? I found them at an estate sale in Wisconsin last weekend for 50 cents each!
