Starts in the family, stays in the family.

Like I put in the previous blog, my wife and I were trying to come up with a birthday present for my niece. My mom has offered her old cedar chest to my wife sevaeral times, but we just never had room to take it with us, until this past year. We actually redid this chest before the one we gave to Christa. I remember this chest from when I was little, and it has always had a few small problems with it. I know that it has been hard to open it, and that the back of it never sat like it was supposed to. For the past several years it has been sitting down in my parents basement and the back of it was supported with some blocks of my dad's walnut burls.

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 remaing 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.

After some work, this is what it ended up looking like:
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 I 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.