Zenith Porthole...sortof
 

I know that most of you here subscribe to the "it must be original or you should be shot" crowd, but when the dumpster is the only alternative then I think that creative reuse should be celebrated, in moderation of course.
I've heard of people doing this but I don't know that I've ever seen one so well done.

Antique TV Turned Aquarium (Clifton Heights)

For sale is a 1950's television that has transformed into a fully functional aquarium. The unit was gutted and fitted with a custom bowl. It is hard to see from the pictures but there is a custom painted watercolor mural (done by myself) as the backdrop to the aquarium. The entire piece was gutted and refinished by myself and has a hinged top for easy access for feeding the fish. The project took about 4 months. The speaker in the tv is functional and includes a working auxiliary jack for listening to your iPod or other music device. The speaker is the original and has incredible sound. The nobs to not do anything though if the price is right I could certainly put the light on a dimmer or make one the volume for the iPod. This was a project that I wanted to see if I could do and I succeeded. Now it can be yours. Make me an offer.
Please email me any questions, no spammers!

http://images.craigslist.org/5T65X15...5fd498193e.jpg
http://images.craigslist.org/5V45O15...db72dd1c09.jpg

It appears they did a nice job without butchering it to death. If it was near me, I'd buy it, and then put a chassis and tube in it..

Creative re-reuse.

I saw it listed yesterday, wonder if he still has the guts?:scratch2:

Yeah really... it would be a shame to think that someone threw away a possibly good round metal crt!

Up in the attic I have a 12" porthole chassis. I showed up at the flea market one day about an hour too late; somebody else bought the set to do the aquarium trick and talked the vendor into keeping the chassis. Who knows, maybe someday it will show up cheap on CL and I can reunite them!

Well ... all I can say is that the cabinet is in nice condition and could have been restored as a nice TV. Not interested in aquariums.

Sorta reminds me of the time when my dad sold used cars back in the late 1960's. He had for sale a 1963 Thunderbird convertible with the roadster deck that covers the back seat. It was a really nice car. He sold it to someone who used it to deliver morning newspapers with. A year later the owner brought it back to the car lot looking for something more practical. By then it was ragged out. From my perspective, that Thunderbird was not intended for use delivering newspapers just like that porthole TV was not intended to be used as an aquarium.

Carl

I realize this T-bird was used, but still, even a used T-bird couldn't have been cheap. Paper boys could afford a Thunderbird??

I'm sure that many of you here have had an aquarium at some time in your past. We had two when I was in high-school. While they were kinda cool to look at, they were a pain in the ass. Could you imagine what it's like to service/clean the aquarium inside a TV cabinet? I realize that guy put hinges on the top to open up, but I'm seeing how that would really be inconvenient... top or no top.

What bugs me about this one is how proud he seems to be that he "Gutted" it to do this.

I recently did a Color Conversion on an Admiral Bakelite set, a grave TV collecting sin in most cases but in that case I just had a Cabinet to work with.

I'm a purist, of course, and the last thing I would do to a good vintage TV is turn it into an aquarium.

Still, you have to admire the work that went into it, from what I can see...:smoke: