Admiral's Cabinet - Preserve, Conserve, or Restore?

[RitchieMars]

I don't think I've ever shown you guys a picture of the Admiral's cabinet in much detail. I spend so much time staring at that small chassis during all of my hit-and-miss repair work, that it sometimes seems strange that such a small instrument is the heart and soul of a much larger and imposing entity! Here's what it looks like:

Older picture, before I took it apart:



At the moment it looks like this:







It's not in the best shape, but it's far from atrocious. As you can see, she has very broad shoulders! The top is probably the roughest, and it's easy to imagine why. So many things have been placed up there over time, not to mention the fact that a portion of my great grandmother's roof actually collapsed on it! There's a dent or two from this on the top left side...



Now, as many of you probably know already, the flash is very unforgiving on things and the Admiral actually looks quite nice in normal lighting. I've always had a record player sitting on top of it, which always seemed to hide a lot of the rough spots. I have a few choices here, and I'll let you know already that I have done wood refinishing before and I rather enjoyed it. But, I'm particularly picky about the Admiral.

This radio had always fascinated me as a child when it sat in the corner of my great-grandmother's den. I recall there being an old chair beside it, and even though it was on the opposite side of the room, I'd go sit over there so I could get a closer look at it. I was always reminded not to try and turn it on or mess with the knobs, so I was really excited when my dad told me that she said I could have it. She couldn't live on her own anymore, and we soon had to move the rest of her furniture out of the house. She passed away just a few years ago at the age of 104, buried not even a block or two from the house she lived in all those years. Thinking back on it, it makes me feel good to know that she remembered how much I liked the Admiral and wanted me to have it...

So, as for the cabinet... I can either simply preserve what's there, flaws and all, and keep it shined up the best I can and let it continue to show it's age. Some would say that's leaving it "original" but of course... it didn't originally come with all this wear and tear, now did it? I could take a sort of conservative approach and use some light refinishing techniques that would somewhat hide some of the damage without completely repairing it. Or... I can plan on going to town on this thing between now and fall and try and do a major refinishing job. Based on my skill level, however... I'm leaning more towards the middle-ground approach.

Any advice on how I should proceed? Feel free to simply link me over to an example of a similar project that one of you guys did. I also won't count out the possibility that I should take this to someone with more experience, if one of you may know someone who does good, affordable work not too far outside of my region. ( South Carolina Upstate )