DIY Mid-Century Modern Media Console [VIDEO]

Hiiieeeee! It’s been a minute since I shared a DIY post – like, a real long minute. But Hubs and I built this mid-century modern media console last fall and I’m still super proud of it and wanted to share it with y’all. Ignore that ugly TV cord – I haven’t gotten to that yet. Gimme a year or so.

Last year when we lived in Georgia, Hubs and I redid an antique hutch that my mom had. I really only have one “before” pic of it and it was “new” so it looked amazing – it then spent over a decade in a storage unit after being in a flood and was in such rough shape. And, oh yeah, the legs completely rotted off of it. When we had our home photographed for BHG’s Makeovers Magazine, the hutch was actually sitting legless on the floor being used as our media console (far left).

We finally got around to redoing it two years ago and I completely messed up and never got a decent pic of it when it was completed. When we moved, our movers clearly didn’t give a sh!t about our stuff and SO MUCH was damaged on the way back to Texas. I mean, I guess you could say that if it didn’t survive the move that I never really “fixed” it in the first place, but whatever. Anyway, because I’m so lazy these days about project posts and instructions and stuff, I’ve just smashed a bunch of my snapstories together to kind of document the process. So much easier than typing …  she says as she pecks away at her keyboard. I searched everywhere for replacement legs for the ones that had rotted out (that weren’t insanely expensive or custom made) and found nothing, I ended up using some cut-off stair balusters. I cleaned out the hole where the legs had rotted off, cut a small dowel rod to fit down in that hole and then filled the extra space with Bondo. Once the Bondo was dry, I used a double sided screw thingie to screw into one end of the cut-off baluster, and then screwed the other end into the wooden dowel piece in the hutch. Worked like a dream until the movers got a hold of it. Ya know the opening sequence of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective –  when he’s posing as a delivery guy, kicking the box around and it’s obviously smashed to pieces inside? That’s kinda how I imagine our movers treating our stuff. I mean, this is how they treated our campaign dresser:

Skip below to check out the video but here’s a quick rundown of the MCM piece we built to replace our damaged hutch at the new Texas house.

We built this thing specifically to fit this space so I’m not gonna go into measurements really. I think it’s about 72″ long, 38″ high and about 20″ deep. For the measurements on the middle compartment, after we built the outer box, we just kinda eyeballed it and then made sure that the two outside compartments were of equal width to each other. We used 3/4″ sanded plywood, did a strip of wood glue for all connecting pieces and then just used a Ryobi Airstrike Narrow Crown Stapler. Honestly – we started out with a hammer and nails…  no, hold on, honestly – we couldn’t find the hammer so we started out with nails and meat tenderizer. That lasted literally one nail and we were like, oh yeah, we’re adults with real f*cking tools, so… yeah. The mid-century inspired legs are from tablelegs.com – they are 12″ tall – the paint color is Peat by Behr. For painting tips, you can check out my painting process here and my long-lost-love, my paint booth, here.

We had our eye on something similar from West Elm but we all know how pricey that place is – I think we only spent about $200 on this and a big hunk of that was on the legs. Okay, here’s the video:

See?! Toldja I suck at blogging now – not even mad about it either.