The side tables in our bedroom have been a bit difficult to place. At first, they wouldn’t fit where we had the bed, so we moved the bed and changed the layout of the room. The tables then sat on a wall under the window with an uneven floor. We shimmed them, which worked fine, but they still took up way to much floor space and we also just started using them to store random stuff. You can see in this post that they just weren’t working.
Our side tables in their original location. They are good looking tables, but you can see how crooked the shimming is on the right.
Jen wanted to scrap those side tables, and go for something a little smaller that we could mount to the wall next to the bed. I was a slightly against the idea at first because I know how often we rearrange furniture, and paint walls. But I gave in when Jen said we could put the bed back on the inner wall (away from the window) because I’m a firm believer in the flow of a space and all things Feng Shui.
While out on our usual weekend stroll, we stopped by the Habitat for Humanity ReStore to look for some deals. The furniture section was dry, except for the classy twisting dolphin base dining room table, which was just too fabulous for our house at the moment, so we moved on. While weaving through the dehumidifiers and broken toasters, some pleasing clean shapes caught my eye.
These are what our new side tables looked like when we got them home
These old beat up speakers stood out from the rest and looked to be just the right size. At $10 for the pair, it seemed worth it just to take them home, open them up and see what was inside. My original idea was to just cut out the entire inside and use the outer box. This would have removed all the character from the speaker though, and if we did that we may as well have just nailed 4 boards together to make a box. So instead, I decided to use as much of the speakers as I could without damaging them any more than I had to.
After stripping them down to just the wood we ended up with some pretty ugly beat up looking boxes.
Speaker Box disassembly
In lieu of gloves, fiberglass removal can be done with doggy poo bags
Stripped speaker boxes
Closer inspection during disassembly exposed some less than desirable ware and tear on the composite board, but wood filler could fix that right up so we weren’t swayed.
Wood filler to the rescue
To allow for our brackets to come through the back, I drilled out some pilot holes then cut the rest with a jigsaw.
A drill and a jigsaw made quick work of the back panel
Jen and I sanded the boxes to rough them up then painted them with the trim paint we’d been using in the house. It’s a primer and paint mix, so a few coats and a dash of spray paint for touch up came out looking really nice.
Painted speaker boxes
Once the speakers were dry, we took them into the bedroom and measured out the spots for the brackets.
Measuring out bracket holes
Then we put the brackets into the boxes where they would sit when flush with the wall and marked the spot where the inner screw that attaches the box to the bracket would go. I then used a hammer and nail inside the box to make a pilot hole so our screw would go in easy. Next, the L-Brackets got mounted with some wall anchors, and the boxes slid right into place. The last tough part was tightening the screws inside the box.
Getting ready to hang the table
Lanky arms are a key tool for this step
Before tightening them all the way down though, we made sure to slide our phone charging wires up through the back speaker wire holes.
This is the mounted box without any trim
We decided to use some of the old speaker parts to give the final product a cleaner look, because the underlying wood was still pretty beat up. On the larger speaker holes we decided to paint the inner ring black and then lay a painted piece of speaker foam over the top. This left us with our final product, Some sturdy, clean, space efficient side tables that match our trim and cost only $10 plus some paint, glue and our time. Here’s a quick before an after to give you an idea of how it changed the room.
This is what it looked like without the tables
Same angle with new tables
Here is a close up of our new speaker box side tables with trim and lamps
Here I am enjoying a finished project
We’re pretty stoked about about how this repurposing project came out, and we’d love to hear about your repurposing projects too. Drop a line and let us know what you think.
**BTW, we didn’t actually scrap the side tables. We just put them on craigslist:
