Tackling the cutlery drawer conversion project

Having been foolish enough to go to a boot fair just before going on holiday and lugged back a project to do I resolved that it was time to tackle it. Quite apart from anything else it was making the place look untidy. Few things look worse than a half done DIY project.

So! Sanding first. The intent was to just take the top layer of grime off with a fine grade sandpaper so I could keep the patina. Unfortunately the gunge left on the drawers from the weird fake wood plastic veneer meant that I had no choice but to go for a proper sanding job. I was less hardcore on the rest of the chest but needed to take enough layers off to make the colour of the wood blend together nicely.

Sanding done it was time for the magic that is Briwax to go on. Ooh it came up luvverly!

However the insides of the drawers were still a bit of a mess. The glue that held the fitted interior was tough and was not budging. After several hours of scraping and sanding I accepted that the bottom of the drawers were never going to look great and I was better off giving them a pretty lining and hiding the mess.
 

 But what lining? Oh so many choices of lovely wrapping paper, some astonishingly expensive. In the end I went for this one from Judd street Papers. I thought the 30's feel would work well with style of the drawers and the yellow would blend nicely with the colour of the oak.

At £2.20 per sheet it was a little more expensive than I wanted but as the drawers only cost £7.50 I thought I could stretch to it. (This got slight more expensive when I realised I had stuck one sheet the wrong way up.)

I was going to show you this 'bloggified' photo pretending that my life is fabulously stylish.

In reality though the printer has to sit on top of the drawers as there is nowhere else for it to go and artfully placed bits and bobs would drive me mad every time I used the printer or opened the drawers. So instead here is how it has improved life in a very ugly corner.

I am truly thrilled to have got all those papers hidden away. I do not claim to be a neatness obsessive but surface level tidy makes me feel very happy. Just don't open the drawers.....

Being brutally honest I  am 50/50 about the success of this. I am really pleased with how the outside has come up but the insides of the drawers are less than perfect. I just couldn't stop the paper from going crinkly from the PVA glue. It didn't matter whether I left the glue to get tacky, put a thick coat or a thin coat. Solutions on a postcard please. Fortunately the drawers are pretty full already so nobody will see much wrinkle.

My new bits and bobs box restoration- Part 2

As I said before, the box arrived when I away. This was truly frustrating. I knew that there would be a huge amount of work to do to get it looking fabulous before I could start using it. I also one of those people who just has to get stuck in.

I got home. I did pause briefly to say hello to my Matey before attacking the packaging with my scissors and fell in love all over again. This was lucky as it is is HEAVY! Quite a bit heavier than I had expected. Heavier in fact than chests I have that are two to three times it's size. I presumed it was pine I suspect now it may be oak. I am no wood expert so answers on a postcard if you know better.

A bit of a look at it and I can see that is it made out of something else. I have no idea what though. The joints are dovetailed and I am sure that they are original. The only thing I can guess at is that it may have housed something mechanical as there are three air holes in the bottom. Maybe a gramophone?

The tray clearly a later edition and is beautifully made out of plywood and stained to match the main wood of the box. I may paint this later. I think that a good contrast is better than an bad match.

The first job was to rip off the frankly revolting padded top. Under the nasty brown was a rather pretty (50s?) floral fabric. In the interests of waste not want not I rescued what I could.

Under the floral fabric was a decrepit eiderdown. Bit nasty if truth be told. I kept it to see if anything could be salvaged but realised 24 hours later it was truly horrible and I needed it to leave my house taking it's dead skin cells with it. (yuck!)

Taking the old nails off proved impossible in some cases. Even my Matey couldn't shift them, and has a nasty looking cut to prove it. In the end if they just wouldn't budge I hammered them in as far as possible. As I am going to re-cover it anyway the top doesn't have to look perfect.

Finally I removed all the fixings and it was sanding time! I am anti taking off the patina of anything old but the front had clearly had some water damage so was never going to look good with just a bit of polishing.  As a compromise I put a very fine sandpaper on my little sander and took the top layer of grime off. A bit of liberon wax and it went from this:

To this:

Just the rest of the box to sand and a lot of elbow grease and polishing to do.