I've had this cedar chest in my bedroom for as long as I can remember. It made a great front yard for my Barbie house, served as an entertainment center through college, and a storage locker for all my child hood keepsakes.
It began it's life in my family as my aunt's hope chest. No one can recall the exact year it was bought, but my estimates are around the mid 60s. I can personally recall having it in my hands for 25 years.
It has all the bumps and bruises you would expect from a 50 year old chest that has crossed the country and the seas, used as a child's toy box, and as you will see suffered a really bad decoupage treatment. Our biggest challenge (after removing the glue lol) is a large crack running the length of the lid where two planks have started to come apart.
I haven't been able to find out much history on the Murphy cedar chests, I do know the company operated from 1948-2004 and the stamp on the back, mine saying Murphy 20, denotes the maker and the style.
Kelly and I plan to remove my horrible attempt to make it fashionable, fix the crack in the lid, and stain it black so it can become a coffee table.
Now before you scroll down to see the monstrosity I created let me plead my case....
As I said I've had this chest forever, and it has always been well kinda orange. Not a spectacular finish on it. I know it is cedar and has a purpose, but whatever varnish originally put on this thing was just, well, old and outdated.
So at 22 I was college bound to Ohio from my home in Tennessee. And of course my beloved chest came with me. Now at this time in my life, I had an affection to zebra print. Not stark black and white zebra print with hot pink and turquoise accents, but tasteful applications of the black/off-white or brown/off-white pattern.
As I was sitting in my pre-furnished, on campus apartment, I got a brilliant design idea like I always do to transform my plain, orange chest into a personalized piece of furniture. I decided to use zebra print and black tissue paper and decoupage glue. The lid was to be solid sheets of zebra print tissue paper while the sides would be small strips of black tissue paper crumpled and layered to create what I thought would be a leathered effect. After $20.00 and 2 hours I realized it wasn't looking so good. I had covered the lid, but not finished the edges; covered the front and one side with black, again not finishing the edges; and had managed to get decoupage glue on the carpet. So as most of my design projects, I quit and left it looking like that not sure how to get the glue back off the wood.
Fast forward 7 years later and, well you can see...not pretty =(
Our first plan of attack was with the powered hand sanders. We attached 60 grit sand paper to eat through layers of glue and tissue paper. After only a few minutes we realized the glue was sticking to the sand paper and it would take hours to get to the actual varnish.
Several areas we were able to get a hold of the actual paper and pull them off, and for a few hours that is how we attacked it. Then it dawned on us that we could use a razor blade and really get a lot off. By the end of the first day we had already made a great impact.
Of course after getting a lot of the junk off of it, we were able to get a really good view at the crack running along the lid.
August 31, 2011
Over the next few days we meticulously scraped off more glue and tissue paper, took inventory of any major cracks, and started to see the old orange varnish circa 1960. The sander was about to get put to some serious use, but first we had to figure out a way to fix the massive crack in the lid.
The lid had lost most of it's stability along the center. You could easily push down in the middle and the thin planks would bow in. With three kids in the house, and the aspirations for this to be a coffee table, we had to bring some support back in.
Rummaging through our scrap wood pile, we pulled out a 2 x 6 plank of plain old building lumber. Cut it down to size, leaving about an inch and a half on the sides so the lid would still sit flush.
August 28, 2011
Two days after our wedding, we decided to tackle the chest. We forgot to take pictures before we actually started (first time blogger!), but you will get the general idea.Now before you scroll down to see the monstrosity I created let me plead my case....
As I said I've had this chest forever, and it has always been well kinda orange. Not a spectacular finish on it. I know it is cedar and has a purpose, but whatever varnish originally put on this thing was just, well, old and outdated.
So at 22 I was college bound to Ohio from my home in Tennessee. And of course my beloved chest came with me. Now at this time in my life, I had an affection to zebra print. Not stark black and white zebra print with hot pink and turquoise accents, but tasteful applications of the black/off-white or brown/off-white pattern.
As I was sitting in my pre-furnished, on campus apartment, I got a brilliant design idea like I always do to transform my plain, orange chest into a personalized piece of furniture. I decided to use zebra print and black tissue paper and decoupage glue. The lid was to be solid sheets of zebra print tissue paper while the sides would be small strips of black tissue paper crumpled and layered to create what I thought would be a leathered effect. After $20.00 and 2 hours I realized it wasn't looking so good. I had covered the lid, but not finished the edges; covered the front and one side with black, again not finishing the edges; and had managed to get decoupage glue on the carpet. So as most of my design projects, I quit and left it looking like that not sure how to get the glue back off the wood.
Fast forward 7 years later and, well you can see...not pretty =(
Our first plan of attack was with the powered hand sanders. We attached 60 grit sand paper to eat through layers of glue and tissue paper. After only a few minutes we realized the glue was sticking to the sand paper and it would take hours to get to the actual varnish.
Several areas we were able to get a hold of the actual paper and pull them off, and for a few hours that is how we attacked it. Then it dawned on us that we could use a razor blade and really get a lot off. By the end of the first day we had already made a great impact.
Of course after getting a lot of the junk off of it, we were able to get a really good view at the crack running along the lid.
August 31, 2011
Over the next few days we meticulously scraped off more glue and tissue paper, took inventory of any major cracks, and started to see the old orange varnish circa 1960. The sander was about to get put to some serious use, but first we had to figure out a way to fix the massive crack in the lid.
The lid had lost most of it's stability along the center. You could easily push down in the middle and the thin planks would bow in. With three kids in the house, and the aspirations for this to be a coffee table, we had to bring some support back in.
Rummaging through our scrap wood pile, we pulled out a 2 x 6 plank of plain old building lumber. Cut it down to size, leaving about an inch and a half on the sides so the lid would still sit flush.
We were going to leave the inside of the cedar chest untouched, seeing as it's purpose is to smell like cedar and repel bugs and mice, so we attempted to match the color. Our two choices were a Minwax in Dark Mahogany and a Minwax in Colonial Maple. Now I know mahogany doesn't seem like a good choice for cedar, but you will see later that the cedar in this chest has a lot of burgundy-ish color. But it turned out that colonial maple worked better.
After letting the stain on the 2 x 6 dry over night, we dabbed on some Liquid Nail and clamped it down hoping to press the two planks together that had separated to form the crack, and add some much needed support.
After letting the stain on the 2 x 6 dry over night, we dabbed on some Liquid Nail and clamped it down hoping to press the two planks together that had separated to form the crack, and add some much needed support.
September 4, 2011
Minwax in Ebony. I had always envisioned this chest in black. I'm a firm believer in dark stained woods, and black (when done correctly) as a touch of elegance in a room. But both of us were worried as to how this soft, red wood would take to such a dark color.
We put on our gloves, grabbed our brushes, and got to work. This was my first time staining, so of course I was extremely nervous. And I got even more nervous as I dipped my brush into the can and pulled out stain that was the almost the consistency of paint. Kelly had never used a two in one stain/poly product, so he was in unfamiliar territory as well. We both had read the directions, and they seemed pretty standard...apply with a natural bristle brush, let dry for 8 hours, and use a 000 steel wool if we wanted to apply a second coat. It took all of 5 minutes to cover the top of the lid and the sides.
And panic set in on my side. It looked like we had just painted this gorgeous wood black. The grain was barely visible, it was already starting to dry just a bit and it looked kind of two toned, and you could see every brush stroke.
But we decided to let it dry and see...
September 8, 2011
And the following morning, we went out to the shed to check on it before I left for work. We found it looking...well...exactly as it did the night before. Awful. It wasn't what either of us wanted at all! I set off to work, and Kelly set off to sanding off all the black mess!
September 9, 2011
Another trip to Lowes to check out the stains. We had decided to not use a 2 in 1 product, and just get a black stain, but as we're looking over all the various colors we pick out several stains, none of which are black.Rustoleum Dark Walnut
Rustoleum Black Cherry
Rustoleum Kona
Minwax Cabernet
We also searched through their assortment of cedar planks to find one with a more reddish coloring and a few knots to test them all out on!
In the end, we liked the Kona, which was an extremely dark brown. The Cabernet was, for lack of any other description, an exact match to the wine it is named after. It was pretty, but not something either of us wanted to look at in our living room. The Dark Walnut came out looking almost khaki green. But the Black Cherry, which was deep purple in the can, came out looking
beautiful.
We decided to stain a small part of the actual chest, as the board we bought was more of an orange red, just to see. The decision was unanimous...Black Cherry was our color!
***as we were playing around with the various stains, Kelly found a small line on the black stain/poly 2 in 1 we hadn't noticed before...apply coat extremely thin. So we ditched the brush, grabbed a rag and applied it to our test board of cedar. And it looked pretty good, it looked just like stain should. I guess next time we know to not brush it on as paint lol***
September 11, 2011
We started the morning doing a little touch up sanding along the decorative edges. We hadn't sanded the back yet, and we made sure to just smooth it out a little, remove the dirt, and try to keep as much of the original "Murphy 20" stamp as we could.And then it was time to stain. We used old dish tails to rub in the black cherry stain. We started with the lid first, this time making sure not to glob it on and to keep rubbing it into the grain. After waiting about 10 minutes we used another clean rag to remove the excess and smooth out all the rag marks.
We let the lid dry for a few hours, then moved it outside and moved the bottom up onto the table.
I must say, staining is a very very quick process. This chest is about 4ft long, 2 ft wide, and 2 ft high...and it took less than 15 minutes to stain all four sides.
Kelly and I both were amazed at our results. We both had fallen in love with the natural cedar with it's light burgundy tones throughout. But this stain really made this old, almost rustic like chest a touch of high class!
The Rustoleum brand states we can poly after only 2 hours....but this weekend our fall weather has spiked at almost 90 degrees with a bit of humidity. So we have decided to let it sit overnight and poly tomorrow. Plus the color looks so good as it is, only one coat was needed.
We did keep the original lock mechanism and hinges. However the copper plating had been tarnished beyond repair, and quite frankly copper would not have meshed well with the new stain. So we removed the years of grime and painted them black.
Tomorrow we poly...one step closer to seeing how this beautiful piece of my history will fit in my new home!
September 15, 2011
After two coats of poly, the cedar chest is finally in the house. We have it in the living room as our new coffee table. Gonna keep it in there a few days to see how it works. If not, then it'll go at the foot of the bed. I'll post pictures as soon as we know where it's home is!
Our first project is finished!!!!!
