Monday, February 19, 2018

How To: Ideas on Refinishing Home Entertainment Wood Veneer Equipment

Refinishing home entertainment equipment furniture to complement your interior design

So you have a great set of speakers, but you just don't like the way they look when incorporated into your interior decor. 
The problem also lies in the fact that with speakers such as Subwoofers which will have to be placed somewhere on the floor, do not always match or blend well with the overall scheme or color of your flooring or walls. 
Considering there are many inconspicuous Subwoofer placement ideas that could give you great sound, let's face it,  depending on your room layout you may not always be able to place that speaker behind a couch or nestle it into a wall out of plain sight.  

What if my budget does not allow for custom tailored speakers ?
We believe to have a simple cost effective way to give those speakers a facelift while also giving it a custom look that will blend seamlessly into any decor scheme. 
When it comes to these circumstances, you have to make the best choice possible by deciding whether matching the flooring or the walls would appease your personal style and decor. 

In this particular post we have decided to match the floor speaker to the walls behind it in the best way possible, therefore creating fluency in the room as opposed to having your eyes suddenly stop at the site of the bold black speaker cabinet enclosure

3 Reasons why you want to keep furniture pieces light in color.

Visual Flow / Airiness  
When you walk into a space regardless of whether it is a home or an office, your eyes will tend to wander throughout noticing objects and colors. Color usually cause the main visual impact and causes the eye to follow the space. This is why many home decor and or interior decorators will use deep bold colors to create a focal point wall in a small area of the space. 

Bold colors will tend to immediately draw your visual attention, hence making it a focal spot. If you want to avoid unintended focal points throughout, you will need to avoid deep/dark and or bright varying color changes in the space.  

Clutter
Have you ever had the feeling that there is just "too much stuff". The reason for this at times is not necessarily that there is " too much stuff" per say. It may quite be that the pieces used in the decor, furnishings or even the colors of these objects may indeed be obstructing your visual flow. 

Transparency and or Opacity
Keeping the pieces light in color will keep the eye moving through the space making it appear to be larger than it actually is. Especially in smaller living quarters. 

It is to be expected that the colors used on your walls may well not be the exact match available for the options in spray paints available on the market. Nevertheless you may choose to have the same color made in a spray option if your project is not budget limited. 
If you want to keep the budget friendly option, then you can opt to go for the closest shade possible to your wall color and always choose a shade lighter than the closest match. You can choose the Glossy option for an extra punch or stick with the flat finish to really make it blend inconspicuously.   

Note: Even though it may be obvious that an object is there, this will fool the eye keeping it from focusing on the object, hence creating an improved more appealing visual flow.

What is wood veneer?
Veneer is usually a thin slice sheet of wood that is glued to a larger baseboard such as a fiber or particleboard sometimes known as Medium Density Fiberboard. This is normally done to give the furniture piece the look of hardwood with all of the grains and wood rings. By doing so, detail and interest is added to the furniture piece without the expense of real solid hardwood. 
Depending on the manufacturer of the wood veneer, some maybe applied by gluing it down or by ironing it down onto the desired surface. 
Refinishing home entertainment equipment furniture to complement your interior design
Before sanding make sure you cover the speakers woofers and any ported openings on the speaker box as to prevent dust particles from entering the circuitry. 

Refinishing home entertainment equipment furniture to complement your interior design
Time to sand away. Wait not quite ! 
Take a good look at your sandpaper by choosing a fine grade sandpaper (400 - 600 grit). The key here is not to sand so deep into the wood veneer, that you sand away the details in the grains.

The reason for sanding the veneer is to eliminate as much of the original glossy finish as possible. This will help the new finish adhere with a better bond to the speaker box.  
But you must remember that veneer is a very thin layer of wood adhered to another material as a base usually particulate board and or MDF, therefore "sand with care".

Refinishing home entertainment equipment furniture to complement your interior design
In the above image we used a sea blue as the base color for the speaker cabinet. This made sure that the original black color was completely covered avoiding too many coats of paints. This color was also within the range of hues used on the walls where the speaker will be placed. 
Refinishing home entertainment equipment furniture to complement your interior design
Refinishing home entertainment equipment furniture to complement your interior design

In the image above you can notice how the speaker now blends in with the wall behind it. 
For those whom are familiar with speakers, also know that the grills are typically of a black mesh like material. Here we painted the woofer grill to also match the enclosure box.   
The colors used for this project were of a flat finish taking into account the same finish on the walls. 

In the above images we have demonstrate how the speaker now blends into the scheme of the decor. The first picture was taken with bright lighting in the space and the flash feature on the camera enabled. 
The former image was taken with flash disabled to provide a darker example of what it would look like in a darker environment. The walls, decor and new speaker finish makes for a lighter feel throughout.  

In this image we wanted to give you an idea on how closely matching the color of your entertainment equipment to your walls can help create fluency and visual flow without making the items in the space feel too heavy. 

Here we used a deep charcoal black on the walls as the backdrop for the LED TV and the Horizontal CD Rack that sits above the TV just below the ceiling.  
We must also mention that the color used on the wall were for a family room and NOT a dedicated Home Theater Room. This turned out to be truly amazing, considering it blended splendidly with the rest of the home design and decor.  

NoteThis technique will make the equipment really disappear, especially when watching your favorite TV programing at night time, giving the space "the feel" of a dedicated Home Theater. 

The wood veneer of the CD Rack above the TV was refinished in a deep black lacquer to also match the bezel of the TV. ( More on how to refinish with lacquer paint in near future).   

This is a close up image of the deep charcoal black color of the wall and a corner of the black TV bezel. 

Note: We do not recommend using lustre and or glossy wall paint in this area, as it will always tend to bounce too much light when watching the TV or with the ambient lights on. 

The short video snippet below was taken with the lights in the space complete off. As you can see, the outcome resulted in the total disappearance of the entertainment equipment and the wall behind it "perfect for movie nights". The subtle cool blue spotlights seen on each side of the TV set are an option for a "less pitch black ambiance". 

Publisher Note: Images viewed on the Tv monitor are
for demonstration purposes only and are therefore non-sponsored 
and unrelated to this post. 

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