Erik bought our family a 1964 Magnavox record player off of Craigslist for $60. This all came about one night while we were talking in bed and he mentioned that he saw one and was thinking about going to look at it (he's always scouring Craigslist for "something" but never really knows what he wants). 

He said he thought it would be fun to have a stereo with a record player so that we could play records and listen to music with the boys. I wasn't completely sold. He showed me a photo and I was, let's just say, a little underwhelmed.

The color was very washed out. The hardware was fugly. There were lots of water stains on the top of it. It smelled like a dead animal was inside of it (which I didn't know until later once it was in our house). So long story short, he looked at it, bought it and had a friend come and load it up into his truck with him. 

He took the stereo portion completely out of it and took it to 2 different vendors over the course of a couple months so that it could be tuned up. He took a million pictures of the wiring so that he could put it all back together once it was fixed. The actual turntable sat in our basement during this time.

He cleaned it inside & out. I cleaned it again. Remember that dead animal smell? Well there were definitely rodents of some kind living inside of it at some point over it's 60 year history. 

We decided to have it refinished in the hoped of updating it as well as alleviating some of the "musty basement" smell. Erik found someone, again off of Craigslist, and set up a drop off date so that we could have it stripped, stained & polyed.

We decided that painting the interior of it would help freshen it up a bit as well, so I embarked on that as a project while the boys were napping one October afternoon. You can't tell a huge difference in the photo below but trust me when I tell you that the smell was much improved after a coat of paint on that bad boy.

Erik dropped the cabinet off one day and we got a couple of text updates over the course of about 2 weeks from the individual that was working on the project. It looked great once it was stripped and we were really excited when the job was complete and Erik was able to pick it up.

He picked it up after work one evening and brought it home. I helped him unload it from the car and we took it into the house. I started looking at it and noticed the water marks were still on the top sliding portion. Then I thought the poly looked a little uneven. Then I noticed a lot of scratches. I brought it up to Erik who thought I was being overly critical of the work. 

Then, the next day, in the daylight we really started to notice some problems with it. The water marks were still very much in place. There were scratches all over the front of it. The stain was uneven in areas, as was the poly. There were brush bristles in the finish. Overall it was a big disappointment. We contacted the individual but after a couple of "polite" emails I dropped it because I knew that we weren't going to receive a refund.

Below are some of the photos after we got it back.

So what does one do in a situation like this? 

Well, learn how to strip, stain and poly a stereo cabinet after having never done a project like this ever in my life, of course!

So, I got to stripping. I had a bunch of stuff in the basement from when I originally started working on this lovely chair. I ended up painting the chair in the end and then finally finished it about a million months later. But that's neither here nor there. Unless it shows how quickly I actually work on projects. 

Anyway... back to the stripping. I'm sure there are right ways to go about stripping furniture. And I'm sure you can learn about those correct ways if you do research, read articles and watch YouTube videos. But anyone that knows me knows that I subscribe to the notion of "If at first you don't succeed" (get really aggravated about it and then reluctantly start over). So, I decided that I could figure it out as I went along and use what I had in my house.

This consisted of:

Citristrip Gel

A stripping tool

Gloves

Lots of shop towels

Aluminum pans (for the Citrus stripper)

Drop cloths

Mineral spirits, more gloves and some patience

I got to work one night after I had all said tools ready to go and started getting all the uneven stain and poly off the stereo cabinet. About 8 years later (or a few hours) I finally had the stain removed.

Next up was sanding. We moved it into the garage so that I could get to work. Luckily it was an unseasonably warm fall here in WI so it wasn't too bad being in the garage at night. This was pretty much the only time I worked on this portion of the project because its a lot easier to do when the kids are asleep at night versus only for a little while during the day.

I sanded. Then I sanded. Then I sanded some more. I wanted to get the water marks out and to remove some of the uneven areas of the piece, not to mention all of the scratches. I also had to get some different sanding tools in order to get into all of the grooves on the front as best as possible. I made a couple trips out to different hardware stores before I finally found a combination of items that worked for me.

Then came the fun and rewarding part. The staining. We moved this old girl down into the basement for the final stages of the project. We didn't want to risk it being too cold or dusty in the garage and thought it best to move it somewhere out of the elements. I did some finish sanding on the inserts and told Erik I was going to start with those before attempting the whole piece. 

I'm really glad I did because in my research (yes, I did actually research something!) I found that it was recommended to use wood conditioner before staining in order to give the stain a nice even finish. I didn't want to risk ruining the piece after all the prep work I had done. So, off to the hardware store I went to pick some up.

I applied it. I waited the recommended time. I stained.

Spoiler alert: There were little water spots on the insert I did. It did not look as good as I hoped. We asked a woodworking friend about it because I thought maybe I had done something wrong with the stain. He said it was definitely the wood conditioner. So I sanded it down, skipped the wood conditioner and, thank goodness, the stain looked great!

It took me a couple of days to finish the stain and poly and then we let it rest in the basement so that everything could cure properly.

Erik got to work installing the new black speaker fabric that I had picked up at Joann Fabrics. The he installed the hardware. It was starting to some together really well and we were both really pleased with how nice it looked! No uneven stain! No brush bristles in the poly!