I’m joining in on a new linky party this week over at the Sassy Sites blog. It’s the Trash 2 Treasure Tuesday party. For this party we share items that might have gone into the trash that we have turned into a treasure instead. My first project here is something my husband and I did. It’s what we use as a Vintage TV Accent Shelf.

This “shelf” actually use to be the cornice over our home’s front door. Our home was built in 1890, and we have completely gutted and remodeled every room in its interior, and we’ve installed new windows and siding on the exterior. It’s only taken us 15 years to do that.   When the Hubs was getting ready to re-side the house, he had to take down the original cornice, which we decided to keep and use later on inside the house…even though at the time we had no idea what we’d do with it.

Since the living room was the last room to get remodeled, it took us until then to figure out what to do with that cornice. We decided it would look great as a shelf under the flat screen TV we bought when we finished the living room. So the Hubs cleaned it up and put a poly-finish on it, and then we picked out some hooks to put on it. I figured it would be the perfect place to hang Christmas stockings each year, since we aren’t lucky enough to have a fireplace.

We both love our Vintage TV Accent Shelf.  It doesn’t look too shabby (*wink* actually it does look a bit shabby chic) for being 121 years old. You can see there’s a rectangular shape in the middle of it, where we assume an old street number plaque used to be (though it was nowhere to be found when we removed the cornice). At some point I’m going to make a decorative plaque for it, and I’m going to put 1890 on it–since that’s when our home was originally built. But for now that little space is just a little ghostly shape, echoing our home’s vintage past.