90 year old art deco radio transformation

How much would a 1930s radio cost in today's money? You might be surprised. This towering marvel is a Zenith Model 8S-154, and today we'll give it a meticulous makeover. But first, we'll get into the history behind this exquisite piece of functional art deco furniture. Welcome to Montford Boulevard. Today we're going back to 1937, the same year Amelia Earhart embarked on a flight around the world and went missing. That event and so many more were listened to on beautiful art deco radio sets, like the one we have here. Follow along for a detailed art deco furniture restoration remake, and for a closer look at the history of this stunning Zenith Art Deco Radio. There are so many different kinds of art deco radios out there, but this has to be the grandest one we've ever owned. It's a Zenith Model 8S-154. Here it is in a 1937 catalog. This is a black dial model, which is very sought after. In 1937 it retailed for $100. Any idea how much that is in today's money? It's $2,300. That's enough to get you an 83-inch OLED TV. That to say, this is a very high-end entertainment system prior to TVs in households. This was for listening to music, to news, all sorts of events, programs, storytelling. Look at the high-end veneer, the strips along the side with that diagonal grain. It's in very good condition. This thing is so solid and so heavy. The curves on the side, kind of a waterfall edge there. Even the shoes were in really good condition. No major nicks or dings or damage. That always helps. We're even impressed with the columns on the side. Such nice carving work. And again, all of this wood is solid, good quality. These spindles on the front, very Art Deco. That face plate is glass. Some of these have plastic, but these are the choicest materials. The handles, look at the trim. That is as Art Deco as it gets. We can't wait to polish that up. Looking on the inside, we weren't sure if these components still worked. Pretty dusty, pretty dirty. This is kind of funny. When renewing, insist on a genuine Philco tube. So this was actually probably a replacement. The gentleman that we bought this from did not want the cabinet anymore, but he wanted the speaker. So he kept the speaker. Not sure if this is an original cloth or not. We're going to remove this cover right away. We will be using this cavity here for another purpose. So we are making modifications to this piece today. Looked at the other side and we can see that this was replaced by a consumer, probably a desktop stapler. So that grill cloth is not original. We plugged it in and some of these light bulbs work. We actually ordered some replacements. These are the same light bulbs that go in a guitar amp. So they're still available today. Really fun to see that glow. The black dial face, waiting for the bulbs to come in so we can get all those to glow. And look at the underside, just a piece of the tag left. So fortunate, here's where we saw it's the 8S154. So fortunate that's still there. Next, we'll be removing these screws which hold the radio chassis in place. We'll also be trying out a new drill set by DCA Tools. These are vintage slotted screws which go directly into the radio chassis. The LED light that's built into the drill is pretty handy here. Next, we thought we'd test the drill on 3 quarter inch oak, which is the hardest wood we work with. Cuts through it just like butter. This cordless drill is capable of 354 inch pounds of torque. It features 18 plus 1 clutch settings and a versatile 2 speed transmission. It also comes with a long lasting 2 amp hour battery. It'll be a staple in our shop going forward and you can find the link to purchase it below. These knobs pop right off. You can see screws underneath holding that frame on. The larger knob has these funny little screws. Two of them. Looking forward to cleaning all of this up. We've got the chassis loose now. We're going to take that out. Do what we can to clean it up. You can see it's really quite dirty. There's a better look at the bulb. This thing probably needs some work. A look at the inside and isn't that fascinating. There used to be radio repairmen that would come out to fix these things. We like to imagine some of the programs that people listen to. The news events. The Hindenburg disaster was one that happened in 1937. Pretty dramatic. Hard to fathom what that must have been like. We're removing these tiny screws. Going to make sure we don't lose them. And look at how beautiful this piece is. We are so excited about those lines. We do want to retain these spindles but we're going to modify them so we're working out some ideas for that right now. They're attached with three slotted screws at the bottom. The top ones are kind of tough to access. We thought that there was likely one behind this support here. There were lots of these corner supports so it shouldn't compromise the integrity if we pop this out. However there was no screw behind there. Interesting that they only have two at the top. Going to be careful not to damage this hopefully. The veneer peeled up just a little bit but that's an easy repair. We worked some wood glue in there. Looking at the top this is hardy veneer. Carefully chosen. Very durable. Some minor scratches but all of that should sand out no problem. It's always nice to work with higher quality veneer. You can be more confident sanding. I'm going to start with some of this gorgeous trim. There's a good amount of hand sanding to do here. Carefully removing the components here. Wearing gloves because these can retain a charge and we don't know a lot about these electrical components to be honest. We just want to make them look a lot nicer. It's just a work of art getting to see the interior of these radios. So we started scrubbing and cleaning and could not believe this chassis appears to be copper. That was really a nice surprise. Here's how the sanding is going. Found a little bit of loose veneer at the bottom but it was pretty minor so we're gluing that at the moment. This was when we noticed just underneath that trim look at these three stripes. Started to suspect maybe this used to have gold pinstripes along the top. Funny because we've had an idea to do something like this with other waterfall art deco furniture. We haven't quite had the courage yet but there they are continued at the bottom. Sure enough we did some searches and this model had gold pinstripes so somebody must have refinished ours but removed those pinstripes. That chassis starting to look pretty. There was some deep corrosion however that we couldn't remove. We're going to touch that up with some copper paint. That'll be a process but we can get this looking probably 95 percent better by the time we're done with it. Just a little bit of standard cleaner and these tubes are just looking worlds better as well. It's always so satisfying to clean up these radio components. Looking at the bottoms of the shoes we always get rid of these metal cleats. We'll be adding nylon glides later in the process. Getting ready to sand the top now and again we're really looking forward to seeing this clean once again. Really helps with the confidence when you're sanding when you have such quality veneer like this. Always need to be careful with the waterfalls though so you don't bite through that veneer. I'm using 150 grit and look at this. Just like a trip back in time how this must have looked in the factory. Nice fresh solid wood and then the beautiful veneer on the face and over the waterfall. Boy that's a treat to see. Even the shoes. Every piece of wood just carefully chosen and shaped. We're going to round the edges here. There's a bit of a corner we want to remove. That should be pretty easy. We'll use a wood file. We're going to leave that top exposed and so we just want to make that a little smoother. Going with our standard natural oil stain by verathane because we think this wood's going to have a lot of character on its own and sure enough we're going to hit everything with this natural stain. Just doing the top first and the waterfall. Look at how rich that is. Likely mahogany. This thing just coming back to life. What a joy that is to see. We want to thank everybody who responded in the last video about what you'd like to see us work on. Radios were mentioned the most. Anything else? Always feel free to let us know. There's a look at it with a good coat of stain. We'll let that dry overnight. Adding a few coats of semi-gloss now. It's very cold outside today so we've got the vent on just sealing everything. It's just getting richer and richer as we progress. Our light bulbs came in and we're popping them back in. It'll be exciting to see that thing glowing fully as it's supposed to. There you go. We'll get a better shot later in a darker setting. And the chassis looking so much better. We've detailed that. We'll tuck it aside now until the end. Next we're working on some shelves. This is from a vintage piece of wood. It actually had a stamp on it that said 1954. I can't remember what piece this was from but it was left over. We've cut some notches out of the front for this upper shelf. We're going to get this sanded and refinished but that's the idea. Looking a lot cleaner already. This is black gel stain. It's always a little alarming how dark it goes on but you can remove it. You can pull it back a little bit with naphtha if you need to but we love that look with the grains. You can take rather plain wood and give it some character with black gel stain. We'll be adding some accents now starting with black lacquer. We had already sealed that with semi-gloss and this is another coat of semi over top of the black. This particular curve reminds us of a Chrysler Airflow. Such an art deco vehicle. Comedian Jay Leno owns one of those. You can see the likeness and look at these colors shimmering in the sun. This was really top tier veneer that they chose for this piece. We're adding some gold accents sparingly. You can see it always pops nicely off of the black. A really key art deco aesthetic but we decided we did not like it on these verticals. We're removing it with lacquer thinner. We think we want to leave the colors of these columns natural. I have to admit sometimes that ideas are not working. That's okay. Getting into a little bit of touch-up on those curves and the verticals as well. We're fortunate this was in such good condition. The touch-up was really minimal. Time to get into this frame using 4-0 steel wool. It was a bit of work. The dust from steel wool is kind of rough to breathe. Very rough to breathe. You want to make sure you're wearing a mask when you do this. But there's the before and look at how that polishes up. We want to leave some of that darker patina in those grooves. That'll add just a bit more dimension. Lights and darks. Next we'll be using amber shellac over top of these shelves. That should make the grain even more vibrant. Looking good already. Shellac and lacquer are compatible so sometimes we'll go over top of that with lacquer. Lacquer is a bit more durable. Taking a look at the inside and we want to freshen that up as well. We have some bare marquee paint. Limo scene is the color here. It's kind of a softer black. Looking a lot better already. We're excited to pop that chassis back in at the end. We did retain the tag of course. Leave that there for the next owner to enjoy. We do still want some gold verticals but we're going to contrast that with the black. We'll leave the natural wood on those columns as they are. You can see that already really adding a rich element there on the sides. We're starting to affix fresh grill cloth. We had to carefully think through the process of how this was going to go back together with our custom shelves, the spindles, so this will be in phases. Popping that lower shelf in. It's the bottom of a lower compartment which could be a place to hide some items. We're going to put a cover over the back. We're attaching the supports for the upper shelf now again using our new DCA tools drill. I can really feel the torque as I drill several inches into this board. Check the link below for a surprisingly good deal on this DCA drill set. Taking a look at the spindles now. We are going to shorten these. They're too beautiful to just discard but we're making space for a compartment for a shelf. So here's how we're going to pull that off with a miter box. We've got some spacers in there just to keep the proper distance. Testing it out here. We're going to need something underneath the shelf for screws to go into so we'll work on a design for that as well. And here it is. We've added some veneer to the wood that we attached to support those spindles at the top. The veneer will just give it a nice clean look in the front. Got a handy veneer cutter that works nicely. So here are the spindles sanded. That was a lot of work actually. That probably helps to understand a little bit better. We just needed something to put screws. They're going to come from the inside into the spindles. We've got a piece of trim here that will be painted black. We think that'll make a nice edge. We're going to stain it black first and then after that dries paint it black. Same thing with these spindles. And that just helps if somebody's to bump this or nick it. It's got some color underneath. Makes it a bit more resistant. And we're starting with the pinstripes. Very excited to give this a shot. Again we had a vision for something like this in the past. Never were quite bold enough to try it but now we have really good reason to. Did some careful calculations and we're ready to unmask. There were people doing some bold things with Art Deco in the 30s. It tends to be in the higher end pieces though which this certainly was. We like to do that with all of our furniture. Try to kind of bring it into the upper echelon of Art Deco. Really helped to have a reference here. Sealing with semi-gloss. Here's that trim now that it's black. We're using brass escutcheon pins. We like to leave them visible. It's kind of a luxury dropping that upper shelf in. Has anybody ever had one of these vintage radios in your family? Let us know in the comments. We'd love to hear. It's really coming together. We decided to add a detail at the bottom of these spindles. Just trying to match all of the detail work that was already there. We will put these in with glue, screws in the side and then touch up. Just doing a dry run with the clamp here. Looking good after the finished painting details. Just making sure the screw holes align and they do. We're very pleased with this drill. You can see that LED light is helping once again. Feeling pretty solid there. We'll get three screws in the top. Previously there were only two. And finishing up the grill cloth. Again this was a puzzle. We needed to make sure that we did it in the right order. Adding those nylon glides that we mentioned earlier. They're just so much easier on floors. This is an LED light. You can alter the colors, the temperature. It'll turn this into sort of a curio cabinet. We imagine most people will want to keep a bluetooth speaker in there. This hole was pre-cut. Very handy for wires. And we will mount the control for the light on the back. Like so. Getting the custom cover put on now and we are getting close. This is exciting. Popping the chassis back in. We've got its home freshly painted. It's going to be much happier in there now. It's just so nice to see these details coming back together. Finally popping the knobs back on. We polished those up just a little bit. They did not need much. There's the last one. And with that. All right Mr. DeMille I'm ready for my close-up. Stepping back to take it in and we are so impressed with the quality of this vintage radio. We've done well with these cabinets and this one in fact sold immediately. So you might want to check out our store below and keep an eye out if you want one of these cabinets. One more look at the beginning. This was already a good looking radio. But here's where it ended up. Such a joy to work on this fine piece of furniture. If you haven't already, please subscribe to our channel. It helps us to keep doing what we love. Thank you so much for watching until the end. We have a bunch more videos to check out on our channel. We'll be back again soon with another Art Deco Furniture project. But you're welcome back here at Montford Boulevard anytime.