Having moved into a house with next to no storage I needed a big piece of furniture for the living room to store media, electronics, and other things.

I lucked out and stumbled across this cabinet which is the base for a huge china hutch. It was very dark pine, 72″ across, weighed a ton, and cost $50.

It may look great in this picture but it was badly beaten up with scrapes and gouges in the top and front that weren’t repairable in its current finish. This was okay since I wanted it to be white anyway.

I filled the damaged areas with wood filler and sanded them smooth.

Now for the idiot mistake. I painted the first coat on the cabinet thinking I had grabbed the can of primer. Do you believe it? It was so hot and humid in the garage and I was so miserable that I did an entire coat before it dawned on me that it was semi-glossy and not flat like primer. I had grabbed the cabinet paint can instead of the primer.

I debated what to do, but I have to admit the intense heat and humidity in my garage was the deciding factor. I couldn’t force myself to sand it off and start over so I’m going to find out what happens when you sand and degloss pine furniture and apply paint without primer. I’ll let you know how that turns out but from what I read it may take a year or two to fail.

Because of no primer coat it took me FIVE coats of paint to cover the dark brown. Maybe I should have sanded that first coat off.

I bought some glazing gel and added black acrylic and wiped it on the detailing and then wiped most of it off — all I was going for was the details to being accented. So this is what I ended up with.

 

I am really happy with how it all turned out. Oh, and I spray painted all the hardware black while I had it off.

Note the little piece of fleece under the Roku box? That’s the only piece of electronics I want outside the cabinet and I didn’t want it to put dents in the new paint so I have fleece under it until the paint has a month to cure. Never every rest things on newly painted furniture for the first month. Mark it on your calendar when it will be safe.

TV mounting bracket

Now the big deal to me is the TV wall mount I bought to get the TV off the cabinet and on the wall. It was only $25 and it’s a rock solid bracket and installation.

What few negative comments I’ve seen on it are in regard to the little level that’s included with the product. My advice is never, ever use these tiny bubble levels. Everyone should have a decent level so they can check anything they hang on the wall.

The bracket comes with a little long handled Allen wrench so you can adjust the bracket once it’s installed. Since I was doing this solo I took my best guess at the angle I needed and had the screws locked down before the thing went on the wall.

I really, really didn’t want to drop my television so this project made me a little nervous. I guess I should point out that as I am not a huge fan of TV I only have a 32″ inch flat screen. A larger screen would definitely up the difficulty of this project and require more than one person.

While it fits very close to the wall I have since been able to reach behind and connect a coax cable for an antenna. The low profile look is so nice.

I never would have thought you could get a good TV wall mount for $25 and doubt I will ever have a TV sitting on a stand again.