Vintage Radio Stand Makeover with White Chalk Paint

So the consensus last week seemed to be that I'm not going insane just because I purchased another piece of trashy furniture I didn't need.  That was reassuring.  Of course I think most of the comments I received were from people who can also see potential in discarded items, so the opinion may have been a little biased.  I'm hoping that all of you will agree now that this little $5 yard sale stand was a great find.  It turned out better than I could have ever imagined.

In it's previous life, the stand was for holding speakers to a radio that sat on the top.  Please correct me if I'm wrong about this, but that is what I could find searching on Google.   

Honestly, I think that this table had already gone through a little DIY.  If you remember the picture of the inside of the table, I showed that there was a portion cut out of the inside.  Once I thought about it, I decided that the table was probably used as a desk at one point.  It could have sat facing into the room so that you could still see the fancy front.  Just a thought, but it is the only idea that I could come up with about why someone would cut a chunk out of the shelf.

The process of bringing it back to life started by removing the veneer on the tabletop which wasn't too hard since most of it was up all on it's own.  It was too far gone to be repaired, so removing it was the only option.  It exposed a top made of a slab of wood with three tongue and grove pieces of trim.  Since the entire piece is painted, it doesn't bother me to be a little rustic.

The only really difficult part of this entire project was repairing the veneer on the scroll work.  I used wood glue and held everything together with binder clips until the glue dried. (I seriously use binder clips more for DIY projects than office work!)   Then the holes were filled in with wood putty.

There were random nails and thumbtacks all over the piece, so those were all removed.  Since there was already a lot of holes and nicks in the stand, I didn't bother filling in the holes.  Remember, I'm going a little bit rustic.  

Then the everything was sanded, painted, distressed and waxed.   And the project was done!

So what do you think?

My favorite parts are the decorative trim and amazing legs.

In case you don't remember, here is the before of my stand:

And here is the after:

Normally, I don't keep much of what I make, but for now, this piece is staying with me.  It is going to sit at the bottom of my basement steps.  I plan to put  a new (continuous) shelf on the inside so that I can store items that I don't need to get to regularly.  It might as well be functional while it is being beautiful!