Doing Some DIY On Old Antiques!
The Old Police Trunk!
Yeah pretty much would never have thought that a police trunk would be made of wood, but then again mostly everything was made off wood before the world got industrialized right!
This is something that I am very fond of! The trunk and the fact that we once lived in a era where wood stuff was king!
So this trunk was given to me by my Grandfather about three weeks before he passed away and the idea of this trunk came from last year when we went down to the seaside for a nice breakaway!
At the seaside we saw a very similar one in a antique shop we visited and I was about to make up the mind to get me the one I saw when he said that he has a trunk like this at home and that I can have it!
So now for the restoring part!
Yes it is broken and has a lot of fixing on it!
For now we are going to worry about getting it sanded off nicely!
This might be the most tedious part of it all right here!
This wasn't a project that I took and finished up in one day, I worked on it like drips and drabs here and there, a bit after work and a bit there and a bit then!
All in all it took me a week with like working a total of 3 active hours!
I have to say I do kind of like the two tone look on it but we are not going to do that!
The Tedious Sanding!
Well as I said the sanding of the wood is the most tedious task with all of this, but while I was sanding off everything I decided to tear most of the trunk down for an easier sanding!
Not too much though, I removed the bottom panel and that already helped a great deal to get into those tight corners!
Now that everything is done I took a wet cloth and wiped all the surfaces and wait for it to dry up!
I gave the inside as much attention with the sander as I did on the outside because I want this to be pretty overall! You can clearly see that they didn't even care to touch the inside with sanding paper!
Not this time!
Keeping some of the old for character!
I decided (At-least for now) to keep the old brackets to add some old character to it! I hate refurbishing something and not having the old resemblance on it!
The main reason for this is that I'd be fixing it up with newer less beautifull pieces of wood that would already steal character!
I think it is looking all nice there in the corner!
It still needs a coat of woodoc to protect it and give it a little shine! But for today this is fine! Progress has been made and that's all that counts!
Their really isn't any other way to fix this trunk door other than this way!
I mean their is the option of replacing the entire door with a new piece of wood but that is going to steal so much of the character away, I don't want that at all!
Anyways! I think this might work!
Aslong as they are a tad bit shorter than the inside diameter of the trunk this should work perfectly!
The only downside about this is that it's added wood and it's noticeable! But who cares right? Other people should not be sniffing in my stuff anyways!
The Final Piece!
Okay yeah there is a little bit of a critical mistake I made! See that line that dripped right in the middle?
Yeah how I even missed that is beyond me! But I am going to leave it like that for the next year so that the stain can really set into the wood and then I'll give it another coat sometime as it gets older and older.
Connecting the people of #HIVE across South Africa. #hive