Wooden Spool Turned TV Stand!

I am a pinterest junkie! While browsing the DIY section I kept seeing pins using wooden cable spools. I thought some of them were pure genius, so I asked my dear husband to keep an eye out for one at work. He was lucky enough to find one for me and shortly after my sister in law's husband found some too. So here I am sitting on two wooden cable spools!

Well the remodel was getting loud and I was tired of being cooped up in one room so I decided to work on a spool. My original plan was to remove one of the slats in the center and make a TV stand. My thought process was, TV on top, run the cord down the center and out the opening where I removed the slat, keeping the cords from showing.

I started off by removing any hazards (staples, loose nails etc.). Then spent several hours sanding it down.

An important thing to remember is proper sanding is key! Especially if you plan on using the spool as furniture you want the surface to be smooth and safe.

I started off with an 80 grit sand paper, followed by a 120 and completed with a 220. The spools are raw wood and have holes on the surface so I used my dremel 3000 to sand down the inside of these holes. I used an orbital sander on the tops of the spool and my mouse sander for the sides of the top. For the slats I used sanding sponges. It is very time consuming but the finished product will look amazing!!

I was half way through staining the spool when the husband had a brilliant idea! Why not add a shelf? Not a shelf around the center slats but INSIDE the slats?? Sometimes he is too good to be true.

This is where a simple yet time consuming project becomes more complicated and more time consuming!!

After some brainstorming we went to the hardware store and picked up a 2'x2' piece of wood. We measured the inside space of the spool slats which for our spool was 15". So from the center of the wood we measured out 7.5" and made 4 marks then used a make shift protractor and drew a circle.

This is where a jigsaw would come in handy which of course we do not own. So our comes the dremel 3000 again! I attached the cutting bit and guide and cut out my circle just outside of the line. I used my mouse sander to smooth the surfaces down to the line.

The spool has metal rods inside the slats for support and we had to cut in grooves to the shelf to fit around the rods. I used the cutting bit on my dremel to create the groove and the sanding bit to smooth them out.

After some finessing the shelf was installed. We found little plastic shelf supports at the hardware store to hold the shelf in place.

This is one of my favorite projects. So much work went into it and this bad boy will be in my house forever!

Sorry for the poor quality photo. I recently was given a fancier camera to use, hopefully future photos will be better.