Have you always loved those sweet vintage pie safe cupboards with the mesh doors? The ones you see in old black and white movies, where the grandmother cooks up a storm in her farm kitchen making pies for an old world state fair competition. The ones that have all the charm of yesteryear, that hark back to a simpler time when you could spend all day baking pies!
Well one day a while back I had a brilliant plan after seeing a TV unit advertised for free. It was one of those TV units that nobody wants now that TV's are big flat screens, but something about it said pie safe to me, so this is the story of it's conversion from unloved to adored.
This 1990's corner TV unit lent itself very well to being converted to a vintage style pie safe, it had flat sides and then the back angled off and was covered in shiplap style timber that we could remove and reuse.
It had nice little cupboard doors at the base, the big hole in the centre for the old style TV's and a shelf at the top that would have housed a video recorder most likely. The moment I saw it I knew it had a future beyond it's original purpose, especially since it also had some nice little decorative detail on it as well.
Here it is in the advert I saw before I enlisted hubby to help me with the makeover, see how charming it was, such cute little legs and that decorative top. Plus it was FREE!
We removed all the backing shiplap, then cut off the top, the shelf and the bottom to match the depth of the sides, and reused the shiplap to create a new back. The round holes cut out of the back that were there for the TV electrical cords we filled with a piece of wood cut to a circle with a hole saw, that was glued in place and finished with some wood filler in the joins. We then sanded them back flush with the backing and you would never know they were there once painted.
We added a shelf in the centre a little shorter in depth than the unit to allow for two doors to go on the front. We also added a small piece of timber in the centre top where the mesh doors would close as a stop, so they wouldn't push inwards.
I then painted it inside and out with a primer, then 2 coats of white chalk paint. We made two door frames by screwing together some 4 x 2cm pine lengths, then I stapled some wire fly screen mesh to the backs of the frames and we then attached them with hinges to to the sides of the unit.
I wanted the pie safe to have a worn used look so distressed it with 120 grit sandpaper in areas that would have naturally seen ware from use, and also added a small door latch by screwing a piece of timber above the doors with an old style round head screw.
I finished it off with some matte sealer and added some simple metal knobs to replace the knobs on the bottom cupboard doors and for the new screen doors.
That's the story folks - TV unit dreams of becoming a Pie Safe and I was happy to oblige!
Off to bake some pies - see you at the fair.....well a girl can dream. :)
