My very own cedar chest redo...

My MIL has offered her old cedar chest to me several times, but we just never had room to take it with us to the lower 48, until this past year. It has always had a few small problems with it. For the past several years it has been sitting down in my in-law's basement and the back of it was supported with some blocks of wood. Again, I forgot to take a real before picture, so this is a few steps into it.

Here's the before (Color coded for easier explanation):
There was a piece of edging missing on the front left side of the chest, so we took off the remaining three pieces to make it even.
There was support missing from the back side of the chest so that when it sat on the ground it would would tumble to one side.
The front had some really dated wood accents that I took off. Again, I forgot to take a picture of it before.

This chest is from around 1939 and my mom got it from her grandmother for her 16th birthday( and no, my mom is not that old). If you want to see what it looked liked with the original wood detailing, I found one here.

Well, after some work, this is what it looks like now:


We added a new handle, and some new base trim as well. It was refinished with Wal-Mart paint in country white. The temperatures in Alaska in September were getting on the cool side, so the paint took a little longer to dry and set, plus we had to deal with nats landing on the wet paint, along with birch tree seed falling on it. But after a few good coats of paint, it was good to go.

My nieces birthday present...

I picked this baby up at a garage sale in Alaska several years ago. It had been rotting away on some lady's side yard. It was the nastiest thing ever. I'm not even showing it before its pre-getting ready for the redo moment. It was literally, that bad. But when the hub and I needed a special project for our nieces birthday present, we knew this was it.

And here's the AFTER!

Its amazing what a little paint will do! Well, I didn't just add paint, I added some trim on the bottom, a small detail on the front (to cover the old lock hole). I also added some simple spindle feet to get it off the ground.

This is the detail we used to cover the hole. We also wanted to do something on the inside since it was just as ugly and simple as the outside. We went to Fred Meyer to see if they still made contact paper and if they did, find some with some character and would look great in this trunk. Well we found some!! So welined the inside with it. I was pretty proud and amazed at what some paint and trim will do!!