Antique wooden trunk

I now have a workshop full of half finished and not yet started projects - a symptom of trying to juggle too many things I'm afraid. The end result of having so many things to do is that nothing is getting finished and yet despite this fact I still went to auction and bought up every piece of furniture that went for £3 or £5. Ordinarily I would love the fact that no one wanted the furniture but my lack of ability to say No means I now have too much to do and unfortunately this comes at a time when not only is the garden renovation needing my time but I also need to get started on christmas decorations. So it seems I have to learn to prioritise - eek!

With this lack of time in mind I decided that the wooden trunk I bought at auction would have to get less of a makeover than I originally intended.
It was going to get a serious paint job and distressed but oh well I still like how it turned out.

It was in fairly good knick anyway so I was determined to win this piece and paid something like £55 for it. Normally I would have stopped at £30 as I really am a tight wad but I didn't know when another dome top wooden trunk would come along up here in the back of beyond so I left the bidding to Mr CH.
As you can see it was originally covered in canvas. The canvas was filthy though and I considered leaving it on for all of 10 seconds. The main reason to strip it off - other than the ghastly smell - was that I saw evidence of woodworm on the inside when I pulled off some paper.

The entire trunk had to be stripped inside and out, hours into this project I realised that there was going to be no skimping on it - this 'quick' makeover was going to be anything but.
The canvas had to be burned off as it had been glued on with something that just would not budge but yet seemed to turn to dust when heat was applied.
Once it was completely stripped inside and out it had to be treated for woodworm as there was alot of evidence of the little blighters. There's every chance they were gone but I couldn't risk it as the trunk was to go in the living room which has solid wood floors - suffice to say I literally drowned the thing in killer.
The outside was then dyed with Wickes Medium Oak wood dye and given a couple of coats of varnish.

 All of the metal work had to be brushed with a wire brush and toothbrush - more tedious work.
I then used a teeny tiny art brush and painted all the metal work with Hammerite Black hammered paint - this was actually the best part, I love this kind of work.

See all the woodworm holes.

Inside I gave it a coat of paint but being the tight gal I am it had to be a colour I already had. I was going to go for white because I'm totally unadventurous when it comes to these things but I found a large tub of Farrow & Ball paint that was crying to be used - why not!
Initially I was going to do several coats of solid colour but tbh I just wanted it done so I could gain some space so I did one coat and then distressed it and gave it a coat of varnish.

I love how it turned out, it wasn't as quick as I thought it would be but it looks great in the front room holding all our winter blankets.


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