Entertainment Console

For a wedding present to us, my father had built an entertainment center. He built it off an Italian design that I had ripped out of a magazine. At the time I wanted everything to be sleek and modern, lots of glass and steel. I was 21 and I thought I wanted the opposite of what I had grown up with. I loved open shelving, super clean lines, and modern...no traditional whatnots for this girl! Ahh the hubris of the young. While it is a look I still like, I now realize it never would've worked for me and my family. Firstly, when open shelves are involved you have to be sure that everyone in the household is neat and clean like you are. That was not my case, it is obviously never going to be my case either. So this is what we had, birch and steel

Aren't all the kiddos cute? The middle two are mine. I realize this isn't the best picture, but you can see how cluttered everything looks with it all open. Truth be told, it was fine before we had children, but that quickly changed once all their toys and books and other things started taking over the house. My plan was to put doors on everything and add some trim to make it look more classic. I was going to take off the metal strips on the edge and put wood trim in its place...I had a plan.

Then, TV's got huge and flat and my husband had to have one. He came home with one as our anniversary present about two years ago and I had to come up with a different plan, and for the time being it had to be a free plan. So off came the metal strips, it was measured and cut down to a good console height with the plan of retro fitting it and adding more shelves and doors and base and crown, etc. Instead, it sat in our house like this for TWO YEARS!

Dead serious! Wood filler splotchiness and all. Oh well. I still had plans to modify it and make it great but they were on the back burner. Then, this beauty landed in my lap via a client!

Thank you Shauna! Would I prefer to have this as a buffet? Absolutely! But, our house is a tad too small for such luxuries as a buffet and I needed an entertainment console! So I busted out the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Old White and got to work! I love the detail on this piece so so much.

So pretty. It had needed a little modification to become what I needed it to be, so I had to work on that as well. Fret not, I kept it simple in the hopes of one day having a bigger house and turning it back into a gorgeous buffet!

Then came painting out the inside. I used Benjamin Moore peacock blue (my signature color) at 50% strength so it was just a touch of color and not super bright. I wanted subtle. Then I used some sanding and both clear and dark wax to finish it off.

I stayed with the original hardware because it is beautiful and looks great in the room.

And here it is all set up and in place. I love love love how it looks and could not be happier with this addition to my home!

And this is a detail of one of my other favorite things in the room, which just happens to sit on top of the new entertainment console.

Now, it's on to the next project! Only now, my house feels a little more complete too ;)