The Baboon Congress

Beer Bottle Lamp

77 Comments

It struck me as appropriate for Black Friday, an orgy of unfettered purchasing, that we get a guest blog about making the most of the raw materials that surround you.
Today’s post is by Jim from Clark’s Grove.

As an impoverished student I learned to do a lot of improvising. In those days I got by with shelves made from boards and cement blocks which were also found in many other student apartments. I even had a guide to living as an impoverished student that gave all kinds suggestions for living cheaply. It gave a recipe for cooking a tasty chicken dish to serve on special occasions, along with instructions on making your own beer, and talked about using colorful cloth to cover worn out sofas and other things.

Most of the improvised things from our student days have been replaced by items that cost a little more and don’t need to be covered with colorful cloth. The lamp made from an over sized beer bottle is no longer in use. The board and block shelves were replaced by less rugged shelves made with 2 by 2s and boards and those shelves were finally replace some that were purchased at a furniture store.

We are still making use of some used furniture that we refinished during our student days. One of these items is a Hoosier cabinet that we bought for next to nothing at a back street auction house. We painted this cabinet and used it for many years before stripping it and giving it a coating of polyurethane. We even found a source of hardware that matched the style on the cabinet and replaced a broken latch. This cabinet has a lot of interesting features and is still in use for storing dishes and other things in our dining room.

There are some other pieces of refinished used furniture that we are still using. Most of these refinished items came from relatives. They include and old arts and craft styled oak kitchen table. The legs of the kitchen table were not refinished and still are covered with the old wood finish and decorative stripes of green paint. We are also using a refinished dresser that might be made of maple and a small refinished table made from some kind of fairly good looking wood. An old oak dresser has been stored for many years in our basement waiting refinishing, but I doubt that I will get around to working on it and I think it will end up as a donation to the Salvation Army.

The most treasured remnant of impoverished student days is a homemade spice rack still being used in our kitchen that is seen in the picture. It was made from some rustic wood slats that came from an old wooden orange crate and is filled with sets of recycled glass jars of various kinds. This is one of the few times that my tendency to hoard all kinds of things, including used jars, paid off. It isn‘t a highly attractive item, but it has a ‘folksy’ look that keeps it from sticking out like a sore thumb. It could use some new better looking jars with better looking labels on them. This spice shelf is a well liked reminder of the days when we didn’t have much money. It can never be replaced.

What is your favorite piece of re-claimed furniture?

77 thoughts on “Beer Bottle Lamp”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    This morning I am midway through re-claiming my turkey carcass for turkey wild rice soup. While this is not furniture, it does fly in the face of the shop-fest (or as the flyers have named it, “Doorbuster”) going on in stores today.

    I have so much re-claimed furniture that it is hard to choose a favorite. I have written before about the covered wagon box that is repurposed as our coffee table. Being an inveterate scrounger, I have many garage sale finds in the house, as well. Like Jim, I have an old Hoosier Cabinet on our 4 season porch that is a favorite, to be sure. This summer I found at a garage sale an immense New Hampshire Maple coffee table that I re-finished. It now serves valiantly in the new expansion space at work.

    I am just too thrifty to be a truly desirable 21st Century consumer.

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  2. Morning all. It was a year ago on this day that I got my nickname here — verily. I didn’t know if I would like having a nickname, but it turns out that I do. Thanks to everybody on the blog for a great past year. And once again we will be going out to get our tree today, as soon as the teenager drags herself out of bed.

    My decorating style is best called “American Warehouse” – nothing matches unless you count the fact that most of it is wood! My favorite piece is my bed. I got the headboard and footboard (is that what you call it?) from a friend. Then I went to the lumber yard and got two pieces of wood to complete the frame. Borrowed a drilling tool from a neighbor to make the grooves to attach the wood. Then had to find wood for the slats… that was the hardest part, getting them just the right length. Bed is a little creaky after all these years and the headboard doesn’t stand exactly straight most days, but I still love it!

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  3. Good morning to all. Dale told me he thought all of you would have plenty of reclaimed furniture to talk about. A few of us have seen Clyde’s furniture which takes improvized furniture to another level. He has many pieces that he made himself that are very good looking including a tall “grandfather” clock done in arts and craft style. I don’t have those kind of wood working skills. I learned a little bit about using tools from my father and managed to saw that old orange crate into strips of wood that I tacked together with small nails to make the spice rack.

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  4. The back broke off one of our dining room chairs so we use the remaining base as a stool and/or a nightstand in the guest bedroom. I am going back to bed now that he have seen off my parents for their trip back to SW Minnesota.No Black Friday shopping for us!

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    1. Last Christmas we cut the legs off of the tall stools our two daughters used throughout their childhood for eating meals & bellying up to do crafts… My husband recycled them as legs for the handmade puzzle step stools he created for their own little toddlers.

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    2. There is a children’s book called “The Old Red Rocking Chair” that follows the life of a rocking chair from usefulness as a rocking chair to regular chair through a couple more lives until it becomes a footstool. It’s a fun book and the illustrations are grand.

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  5. happy buy nothing day!
    we have my maternal Grandma’s sewing machine (treadle type) in the living room – functions as a table and looks quite nice. in the goat barn i have two nice (Mediterranean style – remember that??) kitchen cabinets that i saw along the road with a “free” sign on them. perfect for storing paper towels, hoof trimming equipment, etc.)
    speaking of re-purposing and of paper towels. one year, before i had the free cabinets, my paper towels were always on the floor of the barn in the morning, and gradually disappearing! only the next spring, when i was cleaning out the bluebird houses in the pasture did i come upon all those missing towels – in a bluebird house, nicely shredded and stuffed into a cozy nest with a very irate red squirrel peering out at me thru the hole! i left her there, waiting until the kiddos had grown enough to vacate their little home.
    i really wish peaches came in wooden crates again! Jim, most of our furniture in the early days was peach crates.

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  6. Our house is furnished mostly with reclaimed furniture that doesn’t match. Most of these pieces qualify as genuine antiques, although I don’t think any of them are very valuable. One of these, an old trunk with a curved lid and a precious old key that reminds me, every time I touch it, of the many hands that have handled it over time. The front of the trunk is inscribed with the initials, K.E.D. and the date 1863, both in faded gold curly script. I bought that trunk when I was 16 from an old man who let me have it for $50.00 if I’d promise him never to paint it. I’ve kept that promise and the trunk sat in my parents’ basement until it was shipped from Copenhagen to Cheyenne, Wyoming in late 1965. Today it sits in our dining room filled with all sorts of camping gear and old blankets. A treasured old friend.

    Husband was a furniture maker by trade and had his own shop for twenty years until he closed it twenty years ago, so most of our furniture that isn’t reclaimed, he made. The one piece that he would prefer that I don’t tell anyone he made is our bookcase; it’s not the usual Danish modern furniture he specialized in making. It’s made of stained 2 x 4s, and houses some of our books, CDs, LPs, stereo, turntable (yes, we still have one!) and TV. I love that bookcase; it’s sturdy, can be endlessly reconfigured to adjust to our needs and has served us well for over thirty years. It replaced the cinderblock-stacked-between-boards variety of bookcase that Jim described, which was a left-over from my student days.

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    2. tell hans i am read y to begin a grage project out of 2×4 etc to house my lp and turntable collection. if he wants a consultants beer fee i would welcome some input. i am looking forward to the project to be finished by spring 2012

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  7. Greetings! My favorite furniture is the beautiful plum leather sofa and brown leather wingback chair I got after my parents died. My mom probably spent a fortune (for her) on that sofa, and the brown leather chair was my dad’s favorite. There’s a slight stain where his head lay during his frequent naps. Those are the high quality, “newer” pieces of furniture in my house. I think the only piece of furniture we bought new was our bedroom set from 25 years ago. It’s a lovely oak queen size pierpont(?). A contemporary style with attached mirror headboard, side shelves, night stand with drawers and touch lights. It’s a bugger to take apart and put together, but once it’s set up, it stays put! Otherwise, the rest of our furniture is generally garage sale finds or hand-me-downs.

    I honestly don’t know how people can afford new furniture. Oops, that’s right — we bought our dining room set new when we got some money from my parent’s estate. It was worth $3000, but we got it for $800 because the dining table was badly gouged. A nice cherrywood (color) big dining table with 6 upholstered chairs. Jim loved the color and style, and it was so ridiculously cheap compared to it’s actual value. Put on a nice table cloth and presto — can’t see the gouges!

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    1. I have never understood why people would buy a sofa, side chairs, end tables and coffee table to match. What fun is that? I love visiting people whose homes tell me something about them. I suppose you could argue that someone’s tastefully matching furniture, bought as a complete set, does tell you something about them. Some friends of ours have such an organized, showroom of a house in the cities. If you want to know anything about what really moves them, you have to visit their cabin in northern Minnesota. That’s were all the family hand-me-downs and small treasures collected over time reside.

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      2. My brother and sister-in-laws house is a carefully mis-matched affair that by S-i-L’s own admission would not have happened without an interior designer’s help (she knows she wants the house to have a certain “look” but will admit she can’t make it happen on her own). It’s a lovely place, but I couldn’t live there. My house, on the other hand, is a bit of a cluttered mess – but as has been graciously observed by a few folks, “you can tell that real people live here – people who like and appreciate kids.” (Which is a nice way of pointing out that my living room is, at present, more of a toy box and art supply storage area that happens to have furniture in it).

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  8. I’m not sure antiques count in this question. My wife’s purchases, everyone. My sister has the real stuff from our mother, as she should have. Hmm. Must be something. If our home were done as per my preferences, not that I object to my wife’s, it would be either all a) reclaimed or b) Stickley style, or c) colonial style. I can picture a reclaimed warehouse with matching furniture.
    BTW: i guess a day at Jim’s is in order, Krista, before me moves.

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    2. I think your home is partly in a style you created yourself, Cylde, due to the many items of good looking well built funiture that you made with your own hands. You and Krista are welcome here any time. I will not be moving for at least another year.

      Barbara, the old oak dresser is fairly plain. I think it would be fairly attractive if refinished. It is better made that a lot of the stuff you find in furniture stores these days.

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      1. Yes, Clyde. I think your home is lovely, comfortable, not stuffy and filled with wonderful art and furniture that you or your friends have made. It seems a blend of you and your wife’s tastes and comes off as a perfectly comfortable pairing.

        You are both welcome here, too. All Baboons are welcome here.

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    3. One person’s junk is another person’s antique! I love having furniture with a history. I often think “if these old walls and these old pieces of furniture could speak, what stories they might tell.” Our house was built in 1889 and we’re only the third owners.

      I’m especially mindful of this after yesterday’s Thanksgiving feast at a neighbor’s house. We were in the process of going around the table with each person saying what they were thankful for. When we got to the 24 year old woman sitting next to me, she retrieved a list from her purse and began, as she systematically crossed things off her list as she went along. Her grandparents and parents (both divorced) were all at the table, as were a couple of cousins, an aunt and several friends. She proceeded to tell us that she wanted to lay to rest some rumors and speculations she was aware were circulating in the family.

      First, she said, her father, with whom she’s living at the moment, was diagnosed with cancer, and she is staying with him partially to help him out, and partially because she has nowhere else so go. Second, a long-term relationship she had been in had broken up this summer, and although they have reconciled several times, it hasn’t worked out. She feels so very alone. Third, in early September she was arrested, sitting in a car with another friend, both of them asleep. The police found 4 g of Heroin in her car, and she spent time in jail. While in jail she began experiencing withdrawal from Heroin. She entered treatment for Heroin addiction and now receives daily shots of Methadone. She has to be driven to a clinic to received the shots because at one point the clinic had trusted her to administer her own shots over a weekend. She took the weekend’s dose in one shot in hopes of never waking up again.

      This young woman was clearly in a lot of emotional pain, and to tell you the truth, I’m very concerned about her prospects; she seemed so vulnerable, angry and hopeless at all the same time. She was grateful, she said, for the support of her parents, yet it was abundantly clear that she has major conflicts, especially with her mother. She said she’s left her life in God’s hands; I’m hoping she’s getting lots of help from her therapists as well.

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      1. i think she is looking for an easy answer to lifes difficult questions. i was told heroine is a little easi4er to kick than cigarettes its just that the termination of the relationship feels like there is a heavy hand keeping you from the option of going back. cigerettes are tough to quit because when the desire calls out to you its easy to reload. heroine is tougher because you are usually behind bars when it is time to deal with it. not much choice there. cigerette cmokers and heroine addicts are both thinking later is a better time to deal with stuff than now. smoked for 30 years or so and never tried heroine because i feared the consequences were more than i wanted to deal with. other stuff i lived on the wild side but heroine not even once. only for that reason . i do believe i would enjoy it but will not be finding out any time soon. hope your neighbors family makes it through the trauma.

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  9. Also, BTW from the last two days. Dale, could you add tim’s and Krista’s songs to the Rhyme Wave?
    And our Thanksgiving Day always lasts until now. My wife makes refrigerator rolls but leaves half the batch until this morning when my daughter makes caramel rolls. I, of course, cannot have them. But they smell good. Oh, does that make them reclaimed rolls?

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  10. Intriguing topic, Jim. As I’ve often explained, all of the furniture in my home is new, chosen as my way of exorcising the ghost of my former wife. Or . . . to be more positive . . . I redecorated my home as a way of reclaiming my own living space.

    I have two old items, both lamps, that I made. The first thing I ever made was a lamp based on a beautifully carved and painted mallard drake decoy. The pull-chain terminates with a shotgun shell (which might sound corny, but it looks just right!). The decoy lamp now lives at the cabin, in case anyone who was up there has a photographic memory.

    Two years into my marriage I bought a handsome ceramic pot and built a lamp based on it. This now sits in my sun room, where I sleep each night. I am sometimes embarrassed by how much I enjoy that lamp. I can stare at it endlessly.

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    1. I most certainly saw and commented on the decoy lamp when we visited. It is perfectly suited to its surroundings.

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    4. good idea steve. i have stuff left over from the marrage of my two older childrens mom and it brings around memories about the b…. that need not be brought back around. i have learned that in business . when i end a business relationship i blow off all reference so i don’t start the cancer up again unneccessarily.

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  11. I have a small table in the living room that was put out on the curb at Jerabek’s. For those not familiar with the West Side, Jerabek’s is a bakery that has been in the neighborhood since 1906, most of that time owned by the same family. The building has a couple of garages tacked onto the back, which I’ve always secretly longed to explore – I think they are connected by stairs to the building’s basement, and are stuffed to the rafters with old furniture and odds & ends. The present owners and the last previous owners have for years made occasional attempts to clean out some of the stuff by putting it out on the curb with a free sign.

    The table I picked up is just a small rectangular table with a surface about 20 by 28 inches or so. It was probably about three feet high originally, with a shelf beneath, but two of the legs had been badly burned and were shorter than the other two, so I sawed the legs off to coffee table height. I used mending plates to correct some warping in the boards that make up the table top and painted a backgammon board onto it. The lower shelf now holds games and puzzles.

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    1. I also love to explore funky old places where there might be “antiques.” Old barns are my favorite, but old business basements and attics come in a close 2nd and 3rd…

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    2. i suggest you ask for a tour. ill bet theyd love to tell some stories. who wouldnt want to share great stories to a captive audience whio hadnt heard them before. tell them you have the table and are aware of a bit of the history and ill bet a dollar it is a fun and productive outing

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  12. Morning–
    Our dining room table was left in the house by my parents and my Dad’s parents had left it in the house for them. A simple round table, cherry with the Queen Anne legs. And enough leaves to seat 8 comfortably. My mom refinished the table for our wedding gift and bought 4 new chairs to go with it. After 21 years I’ve had to fix the chairs a couple times and it might be time for new chairs again pretty quick… it is mildly discouraging that we may never be able to have a different style in there. We love the table and the story… but sometimes you want something new, you know?

    We have an old upright piano that came out of Kelly’s Aunt and Uncle’s basement. She played it as a kid and it was painted a horrendous puke yellow… we had it completely refinished and refurnished and it’s in the living room now and very beautiful. Curiously enough, down by the pedals, if you open the bottom wood door, cast in the soundboard is the name “Kelly”. So it was destiny.

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  13. Along with the reclaimed furniture that so many of us have (I guess I should not be surprised), I still have several of those versatile orange/peach crates. They get used as shelving in closets or porches; some are painted white in a corner of the “all purpose” room and serve as a headboard for the futon guest bed. Some smaller asparagus crates from when I worked at The Wedge are part of the doll house.

    When I first came to Mpls. I scored an antique desk and a dresser at yard sales that are pretty unique. But I believe my favorite is the buffet from a garage sale, quite pretty, made from 3 different woods (oak, pine, and basswood?), which still has the original oakleaf hardware…

    We also have in the kitchen the lamp Joel made in high school from a Livingston Cellars (Gallo) Creme Sherry bottle. 🙂

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  14. Happy day after, Babooners! Nicely done, Jim!

    I meant to get back to the blog yesterday and tell all of you how grateful I am for this place of kindness and reason, and for all of you, but I ran out of time. I’m grateful for this blog and for the friendships I’ve found here. Thanks, Dale, for providing so well for us.

    The only item of new furniture I’ve ever bought is the mattress on my bed. Everything else came from someone and somewhere else – nothing matches either. I have a couple of nice family antiques: a walnut library cabinet with sets of books and a cherry china cabinet with a lovely set of china. I bought a set of antique wood folding chairs (like the ones on the Titanic) at an antique store and I love them. They look great with the dining room table my mom and I bought when I was in high school. I also bought an antique oak table at Peterson Art Furniture in Faribault. The dealer claimed it was an old study table from the library at St. Olaf and it certainly looks the part. It’s full of ink stains and wear and the legs were re-set at some point but it’s so sturdy, warm and reassuring. I use it for a computer workstation in my home study/office. I love having a small piece of St. Olaf in my home.

    I also have some lovely furniture that was made by my former love. We broke up many years ago – back when My Little Potato was first popular – but we remained friends. He built me a walnut desk, a cherry box with three drawers that holds little treasures, an adirondack chair made from ash and walnut from my own woods, and a cherry kitchen table. His character is part of those pieces for me and I’ll never part with them.

    I still use concrete blocks and boards for a TV and book shelf. What does this say about me? Perhaps I got stuck in the late ’70s? I also have a lot of antique peach crates, orange crates, wooden wine boxes, etc., that are used for shelves and drawers. I have an old Navy seaman’s chest that is broken but still serviceable and stores blankets and doubles as a hassock.

    No shopping for me today, thanks! I hope all of you are happy and well and stuffed with good food.

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    1. little potato that was 3 or 4 weeks ago wasn’t it. sounds like a nice set up with memories in every nook and cranny. thanks for the post tg wishes. back atcha

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    2. Krista mentioned using concrete blocks and boards for shelving, but I’ve seen her wall unit, and the description really doesn’t do it justice. It’s an updating of the old cinder block design, using rustic-looking retaining wall blocks, and it’s quite striking. I’d like to do something similar.

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  15. Hm…I don’t think I really have a favorite piece of reclaimed furniture. My grandpa built a couple of small bookcases for/with the help of my brothers…but I don’t have that memory to go with it. Most of the other furniture I’d have a personal attachment to, my Mom gave away.

    Speaking of furniture, I’m looking to re-do my office. So, I’m looking for a couple of desks with hutches, and a credenza (need storage, storage, storage). The trick is finding stuff that fits, stuff that’s as cheap as possible, and I’d like actual ~wood~ furniture. That particle board stuff is just tacky. If anyone is looking to get rid of something like that, let me know.

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    1. ebay store has inventory but it is not cheap. 4000 dollar cherry colored executive desk and credenza for 500 and a office suite from a high end house of 2 inch oak slabs with book shelves etc 9 pc for 900

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      2. TGITH, have you tried Freecycle? People give away the most amazing things. I’ve seen the things you’re looking for offered up to the first person willing to pick them up. Definitely worth a try.

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  16. i like the idea of antique furniture passed on through family or friends, but it seems like the stuff that has been passed on to me has been ugly as sin or falling apart or doesn’t work (such as dresser drawers that are almost impossible to open/shut without cursing) or needs so much work to restore it that it never gets done. So I prefer stuff I’ve been able to pick out myself. I do have some stuff in the attic room that is reclaimed or repurposed: I got a decent wicker chair and footstool that someone was tossing out – the cushion was filthy but I hosed it down and washed it several times and it turned out okay. It’s a great chair for sitting in and reading or chatting with someone. I also found some wooden boxes that I use in that room for end tables.

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  17. My husband inherited a lovely oak antique pie safe from his mother. We kept it at his father’s house until we got our own house. Shortly before we moved back to the States from Canada, we got a phone call from my husband’s sister informing us that their father had tried to dispose of their Christmas tree by burning it in the fire place. The flames leapt up and started a decoration on the mantle on fire, other decorations caught , and the whole first floor of the house was gutted. The pie safe went up in flames. Sigh! It was beautiful.

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  18. i was a refinishing guy in my former life and have stuff in storage that i will never let go, my grandmothers desk. beautiful 1900 vintage cherry secratart where the party line sat in the fargo living room, i have garage sale items i formbyied and was please with, cedar chest tables and bookcases my favorite item was my old brass bed i put out the troops to find and it tokk a couple of years to locate. i slepyt on it for 20 years then marrage cmae into my life and new stuff was required. she took it all with her but the stereo. i have been able to overlook her when i turn on the stereo in the garage. steamer trunks and nick nacks abound. i have fine collectables i haven;t seen for years but i would never consider letting go of. i pay for storage on stuff that could be replaced for much tless than the rent adds up to but you cnat buy memories. so i am thinking may at jims for bbc

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  19. I remembered another – when living in Winona, St. Theres’s College was getting rid of antique student desks (also called library table, I think), beautiful oak with bookshelves at each end. We got the last one, for $15 – the leg was broken off, but Husband “pegged” it back together, and it worked fine unless you happened to hit the leg right at that break. 2 or 3 times the surface’s entire contents slid to the floor with a resounding crash as we watched. I loved it, but finally traded it – my (good) neighbor needed the desk and I got a nice “baker’s rack”.

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    1. i do have those kids school desks from my catholic school with the ink well hole in the top and the little compartment below the desk to stash books in. the seat is attatched to the desk behind. my kids loved playing school when they were little now stashed for grandkids in a year or six. i have old tools. my driveway had a tree fall across it and the neighbor came over to help so i put him on one end of a cross buck saw and he got more than he asked for. i have old drill bits than come in beautiful handcrafted boxes. the planes and hand saws that dont feel old o me . i used them early in my love of woodworking but today when you pull out the makita drill and screw everything together it is a different deal than bck in the day when you could possibly be expected to screw a screw into wood without pilort drilling a hole and so you soud put a peg and woodglue on it instead. i have some of my moms collectables art and religious stuff like candlesticks and candle lighters that i used as an alterboy speaking latin back in the dark ages. i bought a contemporary house and am looking forward to a lake place where i can put the dinner bell on the fron porch ( my wifes grandmas bell where they called in the field hands for dinner an noon) and put out the rest of the classic furniture designs the artisans had the ability to create back when the cared about what the finished product was more than how many they could whack out in a day. art deco is one of my favorites and the intricate old hand carved woodwork form the german craftsman form pre1900 stuff. you can still find it but it doesnt go for 25-50 bucks like it did in my garage sale days f the 60’s and 70’s
      oh yeah i have a killer church pew… i need to get ot my storage one of these days.

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    1. We seem to have found out that orange or peach crates appear to have been or still are popular items to use in various ways around the house. I think they might even be worth more than the $29.95 price you suggested, tim. So, tim, I think we should let you know if ever find a large supply of them some place and you can help us go into business selling them as the latest thing in retro home decorating.

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      1. There’s a store in Stillwater that sells teas, spices and such. Their display crates are also for sale, and apparently people are buying them and using them for all sorts of things. They’re not cheap either.

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  21. I have in my possession (because, after all, possession is 9/10s of the law – or so says the saying, regardless of my brother’s claims) an old radio/turntable console from about the vintage when 33 1/3 records were the new technology. It’s a huge old beast with a lovely curved front and beautiful dark wood – the turntable slides out one one side and a door opens to reveal the tuning for the radio on the other. I used to play my 45s on it as a kid and listen to the radio (though you had to let it “warm up” for a good while before it would produce sound of any sort). Family lore has it that my grandfather bought it from the town undertaker (I think this was during the St. James, MN years) when the undertaker upgraded to “hi-fi” as the latest in audio technology. My grandfather moved it to the house off Powderhorn Park when he and Grandma moved to the cities (he got a job teaching at the then new Bloomington Kennedy High School). It lived in their basement for years and he would tune in the radio while he was in the basement grading papers. When they moved to an apartment, it moved to our basement, where I used it to play Captain and Tennille 45s (and Andy Gibb and other now slightly embarrassing fare). At some point my brother decided he would “fix” it and took it apart – though it never went all the way back together, so now it no longer plays anything. When I moved into an apartment after college, I stole it from the basement because I liked how it looked. It served as a place to house my TV (oh the indignity!) and other things over many years – and has moved at least four times since I convinced my brother to help me haul it from my parents basement to my St. Paul 2nd floor apartment. While I still hold dear the notion of actually getting it working again, mostly I just can’t get rid of it ‘cuz it’s too lovely a piece. Now it’s mostly a flat space for storage, until I find a better place in the house for it – but someday it will relive its glory days. I hope.

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    1. those tube amps gave wonderful tone and the big wooden boxes were wonderful for full rich bass tones. the tube amps form those units sell on ebay foe some semi serious dollars. i look for those big old consoles when i am out garage sailing

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      1. Ooh – good idea BiR. I’m sure I could come up with 500 words about something that could use a photo of this well-loved audio furniture at its center…hmm….think think think…

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  22. This topic reminds me there’s a cabinet in my garage that I’ve had for some time, intending to turn it into a wine cabinet. It’s missing its doors and drawers, but I had a vision of putting in a bottle rack and hanging stemware in the lower part, and putting bottles in the upper drawer spaces. So many projects, so little time.

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