A few months ago I came across a 1959 Zenith model G730 AM-FM tube radio at a thrift ship for $5.00 and took it home. After letting it sit for a few weeks, I finally stopped screwing around and got cracking on restoring it. The radio was intact and did work before all this(with over 50 year old tubes no less). I tested it with a contraption that I can control voltage with and power down at the first sign of trouble rather then plugging it into the wall which is very dangerous especially with tube radios.
I replaced all capacitors with new capacitors and got rid of the paper ones. I also replaced the cord with a new cord with a polarized plug(a plug with one blade bigger then the other so as to keep the correct polarity) because the old plug could be plugged into the socket regardless of polarity and work fine but would allow the metal chassis(the thing the tube and radio bits sit on) to have power going through it allowing a nasty shock)
I need to spruce up the case a bit with varnish but it works well and has a nice tone
Here is a finished pic next to my Grand parents 1930 Hammond Cathedral clock. It cost $29 in 1929-1930 which was a lot of money back then and more so because of the Great Depression. Hammond closed down his clock company a few years later to make Hammond organs. This clock was a spin start clock. When power was lost or the clock was unplugged, you had to turn a knob so that it would work again. You could actually turn the knob the other way and the clock would run backwards. The original clock motor died in the 1990's and the clock was converted to run on a battery
as motors were non existant and after my grand father died in 1998, it came into my dad's possession. In 2007, I looked into converting it back to the original electric and surfed eBay until I found a damaged clock(I did not want to break open a good running clock) and harvested the motor and other parts and converted the clock back to electric. It keeps time as if it was still 1930.Next to the radio and the clock is a vintage Western Electric Model 500 rotary telephone from 1955. It came from my mothers parents home and was wired directly into the wall. I rewired it to allow use with a modern phone jack and cleaned it up. What is not seen is the dial pad I have connected to it so as to be able to use # or * if need be or if I need a touch tone phone (for sales press 6 etc). I also have it hooked up to an answering machine(try finding one of those)
The Model 500 was made from 1949 to the 1980's and was leased to customers(My grandmother was still paying the phone company each month for this phone until 2004 even though after the Bell break up of the 1980's AT&T offered to sell lease customers the phone)
So here is the pic on a 1930's era piece of furniture
and hats off to you for preserving some of our history. I, on the other hand, like to modify just about anything. This usually involves major surgery to whatever it is I'm working on. Then back together and working as if it was never tore apart in the first place. Back 25-30 years ago (had a lot of spare time then) I restored muscle cars. Actually I should rephrase that ............... I modified muscle cars to where they looked new and ran strong! Not worth much from a historical standpoint but then again, they were my daily drivers so I didn't care. In answering the question here "spare time" ........................... What's that ??? 
Actually this past Sunday I was able to "float' myself on a raft in Lake Erie and do absolutely NOTHING 