Early last year, Stamps-With-Foot and I bought a few pieces of furniture from an English couple moving out of France. One of the pieces was a pine drawer-front blanket chest that someone in the UK had built in their garage out of decking material. It was constructed with dovetails, screws, and lots of glue, so it was a stout little piece and for $50, I couldn’t pass it up. The finish was originally 1980’s fabulous stain and it was semi-sloppily finished with a brushed on polyurethane topcoat, but all and all not so bad as to ruin the chest. Just right for a little refinishing.
It sat in the house for a year or so, covered with a runner, before I dragged it into the GROP and tore into it. I cut the funky curved feature off the base, added some corner reinforcement, re-worked the drawer slides, removed the fat awkward drawer knobs, turned and added bun feet to the front, and installed square feet on the rear (going for the 17th century Furniture of Necessity look). I sanded the whole thing down to remove some of the gloppy poly and painted it with an undercoat of red and an overcoat of flat black – also period appropriate. When the top coat gets a ding, the red shows through. I have a number of chairs and other chests done in the same manner. I added brushed antiqued solid brass handles and called it done.
The chest now sits behind the couch, near the door for the back garden and holds a couple blankets for TV watching comfort and two cotton hammocks for lounging the yard.
