I feel like my husband and I are old souls reincarnated. We have a lot of old school values, we love to eat early and go to bed early, I love to drink tea, bake and craft, he likes scotch, taking care of the lawn and we both love the sound of vinyl.
A few years ago, we inherited a family record player, dug through our parent’s record collections that were buried in storage and started the experience of digging through record shops and flea markets to expand our collection. Vinyl just sounds…better, and listening to it the way it was meant to be heard is an experience that everyone should have.
After inheriting the record player, the one issue that I had, was that we didn’t have a space for the record player to sit on. It just didn’t look right anywhere we put it. So, when I was pregnant last year, I found this vintage stereo console on our local swap and sell Facebook group. I knew exactly where this would go in our basement and envisioned a chalk paint make over for it as I envisioned I’d have ALL this extra time while I was on maternity leave (ha)! Regardless, I needed to have it! The woman selling it wanted $50 but I managed to get it for $30 as the only thing that worked were the speakers.
Chalk paint was my go to as the cabinet has a laminate type coating on it and I really didn’t want to sand it (chalk paint sticks to almost any surface). I went to our local Paint Annie Sloan Chalk Paint dealer J’Adorn, and after taking some samples, I chose the colour Graphite (which is a navy blue/grey/black). My plan was to accent the piece with a matte bronze/gold.
My hubby took all of the mechanics out of the inside of the cabinet, while I watched some Annie Sloan Chalk Paint YouTube how-to videos to learn the technique. I first took some matte gold Rust-Oleum spray paint from my local Home Hardware to cover the orange areas, and then got to chalk painting.
Chalk painting was SO easy to do and hardly took any time at all. I did two coats of the Graphite chalk paint, and sealed it with the Annie Sloan Wax (which did darken the colour slightly) and gave the piece a really nice finish while sealing the water-based paint.
I wanted to change the cabinet pulls (which don’t actually function) to a different style with more of a bronze/vintage/matte gold look. Living in a rural area, the selection of pulls at our hardware stores were pretty basic and not in the colours I was looking for. I looked online at Home Depot, Rona, Wayfair and different home decor shops with no luck. A few months later (after lots of searching) I found these vintage cabinet pulls on Etsy and was finally able to finish the cabinet and it was definitely worth the wait.The design reminded me of 1920’s art deco which fits the vintage vibe we are going for in our basement.
Here is the final product. We absolutely love it, and it fits our space perfectly. I am now on the hunt for a couple of accent chairs to add to the space so we can relax with a beverage and enjoy the kind of music that soothes the soul. Stay tuned for updates as we finish the space!
Simply Rural 
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