A while back I had mentioned that Siri and I found a chest at ReStore and were going to, well, restore it. Today was the day! I had previously sanded it down in an attempt to get the old finish off of it and find bare wood. After a lot of that I realized that since we were painting it removing the old finish wasn't necessary. So I sanded the entire thing to give the new paint something to adhere to.
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| Started with the cover and hardware removed. |
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| After sanding for paint. |
After sanding, I tried out some white milk paint I picked up at
Woodcraft. In retrospect I should have primed it first since the wood was very old and absorbed a great deal of the paint as seen below.
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| Milk paint turned out badly. |
In order to add some character to the chest I bought some 1x3 select pine boards and added some decorative framing to emulate a panel look on the chest. This was my first chance to use one of my new tools as well: a brad nail gun.
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| The brad nailer made this go much more quickly. |
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| Trimming the corners. |
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| Front has a divider. |
You may be able to notice in the picture showing the corner that one of the boards is slightly narrower than the other. This was done purposely. The boards are 2 1/2" wide and in order to have the corners look uniform I took off 3/4" from one side board which, when butted up against the front corner board that is 3/4", made it appear 2 1/2" matching the front board. Next up was the top panel. This took some finagling to get it to look right. To make it the same dimensions as the box with the new framing I ripped some boards to 3/4" and nailed them on to the edges of the top. Then I added framing similar to what I attached to the main box except that I let it overhang about 3/4". This gives the box a bit more character and give a handle to open the lid by.
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| Adding to the top to match the box size. |
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| The top framed and set on top. |
With all of the framing done it was time to sand again! This sanding helped to smooth out the various joints and the wood fill I used in the nail holes and some small dings and dents. After I vacuumed the sawdust off and started priming. I put two coats of Zinsser on and will paint it tomorrow night.
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| Sanded. |
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| Primed. |
