Monday, June 11, 2012

Telephone Stand: Before and After

Remember back in March when I dug this out of my neighbor's trash pile?


At that point it wouldn't even stand up because one of the feet on one of the legs was rotted.

It's an old telephone cabinet and was used, obviously, to keep that unsightly telephone out of view. This one had lots of problems when I went over, in the rain, and rescued it from the curb.  The top part was coming apart from the table part, the veneer was gone on one of the sides and on the decorative piece on the front, and the veneer was peeling away in multiple places.  the large door has a profound warp to it but I couldn't do anything about that.  I tried.

Anyway, here is the restored version.


It's far from perfect and I have some touching up still to do, like the smudge by the hardware on the door:


But it's vastly improved.

I had to cut off the rotten feed so I'm going to find some tips to put on the bottom of the legs.

I had to replace the shelf in the storage compartment; I just got a piece of luan and then trimmed and stained it.


It's not a perfect restoration, but it is a pretty decent salvage job!


2 comments:

Jim said...

Pat, that looks great. Takes you back to a simpler (better) time.

Chris Wysocki said...

The transformation is remarkable! You're an artist for sure.

Up here in Jersey we have lots of antique vendors but not too many actual "antiques", if you get my drift. Tons of crud, and acres of reproductions. The real stuff is priced so far out of reach it's not even worth looking.

I did score an old hand-crank wall phone though. You've inspired me to try and get it working again. Nothing made in the last 30 years can come close to the sound of its ringer bells!