After all of my Christmas creations, I tackled my gift for my husband. He has always wanted a record player, so after a lot of searching I found the perfect old phonograph cabinet. It was a GE Phonograph/Radio Combination cabinet from either 1947 or 1948.
Besides needing a shower and some makeup, she also needed some amendments to fit our receiver and be useful for us.
The first thing I did was remove the old phonograph, radio and speaker parts!
The second thing I did was remove the lower right fake door where the speaker was attached. I needed to turn this into a working door. Wow, GE made a skookum cabinet because there was so much glue, nails and screws that the fake door was never meant to be removed! But with the help of my Dremel Multi-Max, we got it done! I also wanted to remove the old drawer slides for the record player drawer and install new soft-close slides. The slides were installed before the face of the drawer was put on…so we had to strong-arm the last two screws to get them out! I also cut a hole in the bottom-middle section as my receiver is larger than the width of the right quadrant.
The next thing I did was to make sure she fit in the 33.5” space I had to the left of my fireplace. The lady I bought it from said it was 32”, but she didn’t measure from the widest point. So I had to route 1/2” off the right baseboard and then remove my baseboard and shoe moulding along the walls. 🤷🏻♀️
After the major deconstruction was complete, I could stitch her back up and make her pretty.
I cut out some 1/2” plywood to fit the lower right space. To match the height of the left side, I routed a rabbit on the front and back. This shelf is where our receiver will go.
I installed Blum Bluemotion drawer slides. Sounds easy enough, right?? It took about 4 hours to understand the placement, modify the drawer and install the slides. Let’s just say the next time I install slides, I’m buying the same ones as once you have done it once, I imagine it is much easier the next time!!
I also needed to route out some hinge mortises for the bottom-right door both on the door and cabinet face. I was going to install knife hinges to match what was there, but decided I didn’t have the right tools to mark the locations properly. So I chickened-out and went with regular brass hinges.
I reupholstered the cabinet doors with some fabric my kids helped pick out. I wanted a sparkly brownish-grey. We found not exactly what I wanted, but I love how it turned out!
I ended up refinishing the top as it had scratches I couldn’t live with, but everything else got a good coat of Wise Owl Furniture Salve (wax) which made the dry wood very shiny.
My hubby is in charge of hooking up all the knobs to operate our receiver but I can’t believe how good she looks in the space!! What do you think?
A.N.D. Woodworking 