Another chest box that I upcycled, this time using stain. Seriously beginning to wonder where the heck all these boxes are coming from. If you want to read up on my other chest box revamp, have a peek here and here. This one is for all the timber, himself has been chopping away for the winter months.
Here’s the before picture, don’t ask what I was thinking, but I went through a phase of painting everything in red at once stage! I used my sander to get most of it off but I had to use some paint stripper to get more of the stubborn paint off.
And here it is after I sanded it down to the butt, nice eh? I kept with a geometric design but decided this time to use stain instead of paint, to fill in the blank bits. Using frog tape, I marked out the design.
Using the stain, I lightly applied it in some parts and in other parts I applied it heavy, just to see what kind of effect would come up. I used a cloth to apply the stain and wore gloves. The stain I used was just some I had in my garage, nothing special but I do like the colour it gives. It was called Indian rose wood. The other stains I had were too light, I thought.
Here it is during the process, I had just applied the stain and was buffing it into the wood.
Here is it is all finished. What do you think? Oh and I did seal it with some clear varnish to protect it. All in all, it didn’t take too long to do, the sanding was the hard bit, but I actually like sanding. You can see the grain of the wood coming through the naked wood, I think it gives a nice effect. You can see below, the front and and back, of the finished piece.
Till next time !
Maura
Well its not really a pirates chest, the kids think it is, so I just go with the flow! This box actually belonged to my late Uncle. He used it for his tools and later on he used it to store coal and wood blocks for the fire. Yah he wasn’t really into keeping things in good nick! So you can image what kind of state it was in when I got it. I had always admired it and thought it would look great brought back to life so here it is ………………. What do you think ?
First up, I cleaned it and let it air dry, then I got to sanding and low and behold it came up nice, very nice indeed. I love the battered look of it and all the markings just added character. I left on the metal pieces as I was sanding and to be honest the sanding took away a lot of the dirt and grime on these pieces.
I had wanted to try out General Finishes Gel Stain and I had bought the Java stain but it was too dark for this chest so I ended up using Ronseal varnish in Medium Oak, it’s a water based varnish and I applied with it with a brush leaving 24 hours between each coat. I used a total of 3 coats and it just soaked right in. You can see how it was looking here with the stain going on …..
I placed the handles, on either side, in a jar of Coke, yes Cola Cola for a couple of days to see if it would help bring up the brass. I also used brasso on the metal pieces and scrubbed hard. I kinda like how they came up in the end.
