The trunk story

We came across used furniture shop stand, while changing houses, and it was like stepping into the candy store! We were driving by, with our car bursting with all the boxes, and suddenly we saw a pile of old, broken furniture. Some of them were average at best, other beautifully carved, some in reasonably good condition and the rest almost beyond repair. It was pouring, as it does in the middle of the monsoon and most of the pile was just rotting, barely covered by the shed’s roof. As soon as we unloaded our boxes, we returned to this magical place and bought few things on the spot. That’s how my adventure with renovating furniture started.

The trunk was my first project, so most of the time I had no idea what I was doing. With the help of Pinterest I managed to finish it (though I’m still searching for matching handles) in surprisingly short time and had tons of fun in the process.

The first step was solid sanding. I got lucky, cause the trunk was almost stripped of all the paint and polish. The bottom was nearly eaten through by termites though. I got some extremely smelly poison and wood protector and brushed it all over the trunk. Lucky we have quite spacious porch, because I can’t imagine using it indoors. Of course I had to do something about all the holes. In the shop, they recommended sth called “putty” which basically is a slow drying paste. You can apply it on wood or wall cracks, smooth out with the “putty knife” and sand to perfection when it is dry. Later on I found proper wood filler, which is much thicker and stronger, but since only the bottom of the trunk was damaged it doesn’t matter that much.

After that came the wood primer and later the wood paint.

The most annoying part of the renovation was waiting. Every product I used had to dry 24+ hours: the poison, the wood filler, the primer, the paint and then the wood polish! And, of course it took double the time, since there was always one side (on which the trunk was lying) left to pain after the rest dried.

Nevertheless I reach the happy moment when the whole thing was nicely painted in sort pale sea foam color. I used oil paint with satin finish from Asian Paints, which I’m rather happy with.

I actually hesitated quite a bit before painting the whole thing. In the beginning, I thought of just staining the wood and applying wood polish, but in the end I decided on more vintage look with some typography.( This is a fantastic site with many printables, transfer methods etc.)

My print transferred reasonably well, though I had to keep an eye for the details of the pattern while painting it.

 I used simple acrylic paint for the typography, since I was planning to secure it with wood polish in the end. After the print was done, I took out my sand paper again to give the trunk more authentic vintage look. And, as I mentioned before, I gave it a good coat of slightly tinted wood polish.

 I added a very simple keyhole but I’m still on the lookout for nice, heavy side handles. So far I’m simply in love with it, though I may repaint it again one day. After all I’m gonna have to start planning our future flat quite soon!