Cedar Chest Re-Do

A couple of months ago I purchased a cedar chest off of someone on FB.  It was in pretty bad condition and usually I would have passed on something like this, but I really liked the shape of it.  All of the legs were loose and the hinges on the lid were broken off.  When we unloaded it from the car at home, we dropped the lid and it broke into 3 pieces.   Louie was disgusted before we even got it into the garage and I was kicking myself for buying it in the first place.  It sat in the garage for over 3 months because neither one of us wanted to even look at it.

Finally Louie told me we should start working on it or he was going to throw it out.  Well, that was all the incentive I needed because I had him put it up on my work table and we stared at it.  First we removed all the broken hardware...

Reattached and reinforced all the legs....

Refitted all the panels for the lid and attached everything.....

We installed new hardware and gave the inside of the chest a light sanding to help bring out the cedar scent.  After a quick wash down, I pulled out my favorite Zibra paint brush and mixed up a couple different shades of gray paint....

First I painted the entire chest with a pale gray and then gradually dry brushed darker shades of gray as I moved down towards the bottom of the chest....

Here's the finished chest!

For sale in the Chicago area for $ 165.00.  Dimensions are 40" x 18" x 24" tall.

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My Cedar Chest Found a Home

Last summer I found an old Lane Cedar Hope Chest at a garage sale and I had to snatch it up.  It was in pretty rough shape, but we cleaned it up, took the sander to it, re-stained it and made it look like new.  You can read my original post about this work-in-progress here.

Last week we took the chest down to the lake house and it's now in the front room....

I always wanted a Lane cedar chest so I was very excited to get this one.  It's all the more special because I waited so long for it and because I refinished it myself.  I know I'll get years of use from it and it's spot at the lake house is the perfect place for it to be.

Refinishing 2 Cedar Chests

Chablis and I have slowly amassed quite the varied collection of furniture that we wanted to refinish.  We've been hitting garage and yard sales all summer and our garage is overflowing.  Crammed to the rafters with so much furniture in fact, that Louie finally told me that we had better start working on some of this stuff and get it out of there.  I gave him the sad face and before I knew it, a new storage shed was erected in the yard and all the furniture was moved out of the garage.  Chablis and I staged everything out in the yard to decide what we wanted to start on first.  Let me tell you - there is a lot of stuff!

With the weather forecast calling for a few days of cool temperatures and sunny skies, we decided to tackle a couple of projects this week.  We decided that the 2 cedar chests were first on the list to be done, because we could easily store other stuff inside them once they were finished.  Smart idea, huh?

I decided to tackle this Lane Cedar Hope Chest.  Other than being severely scratched and badly water stained, it was in really good shape.  All the wood was sturdy and intact.  I gave it a good sanding down and also removed and cleaned the hardware handles.

 

Chablis had finagled  negotiated a really good price on this antique cedar chest and she couldn't wait to start on it.  This one was in really bad shape.  It had several cracks in the wood, missing moldings, rusty hardware and really dirty all over.

Since we had the sander out, we decided to sand down several other projects right away as well.  After all, if everything was going to get saw-dusty, we might as well get that out of the way...

After the sanding we gave everything a good vacuuming and a thorough wash down...

My son had also just asked me to find him a small dresser for his room.  I picked up this one for free!  He didn't care for the wood finish, so I sanded it down and then he asked me to paint it dark brown.  If you look closely in the background you can see my new shed that is still crammed with lots more stuff to work on....

Here's his finished dresser.  Plain, I know, but it was exactly what he wanted....

Here's what the finished Lane Cedar Chest looks like.  Based on the serial number stamped on the bottom, I think it was made in October of 1974.   I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet but it sure is beautiful!

**  I wanted to add this after- the- fact discovery.  I contacted Lane Furniture and asked about background information on this chest.  I got an almost immediate response: " It was from the CACHE collection by Lane. Mounted on Hidden casters and made out of Oak veneers and had a dark oak finish.  It was also identified as being made in 1974."  I'd like to thank Susan B. over at Lane for helping me find the correct information on my chest.  I'd also like to highly recommend the Lane Company - they go above and beyond for their customers!  **

Chablis was thrilled with how her Cedar Chest turned out.  She put a ton of work into it.  She had to repair a crack in the bottom, removed a lot of the crappy trim and really cleaned up the hardware.  Then she stained it.  I love the color and the natural dents and dings.  It has a lot of character.  She said she's definitely keeping hers.

 The original hardware looks amazing!

We got railroaded by rain the last 2 days so our projects got put on hold.  We have lots more to finish up before winter hits and it's too cold to work outside any more.  Unless I give my husband the stink eye and worm another shed out of him to work in.  Hmmmm.........

I'm joining Craft Frenzy Friday at Obsessive and Creative and Sunny Simple Life's From the Farm Blog Hop.  Stop by and say hi!