How to repurpose a French Provencial Chest...

   The first thing I have to show you is: What to do with a French Provencial Chest of drawers.

It wasn't the best piece of furniture to begin with, but the carcass was solid. The non-wood drawers were throw-away.

    Now I have a fairly deep set of very short shelves - no good.

By removing the divider between the two top drawers and the bottom three drawers, you get two cubbies of decent size. As you probably know, the drawers are separated by wood and cardboard. The wood is usually attached to the carcass by a tenon, which is easily cut with a jig saw or keyhole saw. The cardboard from the divider you want to keep should be replaced with 1/2" plywood cut to fit inside as a floor to the top cabinet. The same will be necessary at the bottom. You could stop here and use baskets inside or for toy storage, but I see a t.v. cabinet possibility:

T.V. on top, the cable box or dish receiver in the top cabinet and dvd or game storage below, so you need doors. I actually went to our vo-tech to learn to build these things (and drawers), ant they are pretty easy after practice. The two doors on top (for the receiver) need to have glass, or something the remote can transmit through, and I chose this shiny punched metal we got for free on "big trash" day. The bottom two doors are solid to hide the mess. Black hides a lot of "boo boos" and goes well with the metal plus it looks great with the lavender interior.

The key door pulls both face the same way until you reverse one and they fit together.
All together, the door pulls were the biggest expense of the whole project.