Repurposing an Antique Radio Part 1 - Cleaning and Gutting

18 October

In the midst of all the fixer-upper house projects, leave it to me to add more projects!

But in my own defense, when you thrift and you see something cool... you can't pass it up or it won't be there next time! It's not like shopping at Target!

Sooo... when I saw this antique radio at one of my local thrift stores, I couldn't pass it up.

It was sitting outside and at first, I wasn't too excited about it until I walked up and saw the $12.99 price tag! 😲

I knew exactly what I wanted to make with it right away.

You see, I've had half of an old steamer trunk sitting around for about 3 years now waiting for me to transform it into a bar but for some reason, I just couldn't get my head wrapped around how it was going to work... it was overwhelming to me. So there it sat.

But as soon as I saw this radio, I knew it was going to work SO.MUCH.BETTER! It already had shelves. It already had the coolness factor. And, it had an awesome price to boot! So I paid for it, loaded it up, and started transforming it as soon as I got home!

Repurposing an Antique Radio Part 1 - Cleaning and Gutting

I'll be sharing the transformation of this old radio in several different posts with videos sharing my progress.

In part one I'm cleaning it up and pulling out the old radio parts. Don't worry, someone before me had cut the cords so there wasn't even a way to test it to see if it still worked.

My parents had one similar to this when I was growing up except the front of it opened and there was a record player inside too.

You can see that some of the veneers are coming off.

It was peeling on the top too so I decided to just remove it because it's real wood underneath.

I learned a technique to easily get the veneer off so be sure to watch the video for that.

Removing the insides was pretty easy too... just a few screws!

I'm saving this old label, it's pretty cool. In fact, I'll be creating doors from the back piece.

I'm assuming this was stored in a garage or shed because it was full of mouse poop and spider webs 😫

These are the tubes that the label refers to. They just twisted right out.

Once I had that all out and the whole thing cleaned up, I sanded it and then created the shelves. There was already a top and bottom shelf so I just cut some thin 1/4" plywood to cover all the holes.

I cut the middle shelf out of 1/2" plywood and it rests right on top of the crossbar that was already there.