He had 5 daughters, but the next generation was much thinner on girls. To make his granddaughters feel special, Grandpa decided to build us all cedar hope chests before we graduated high school.
Sadly, Grandpa developed Alzheimer's disease and became unable to work in his shop shortly after I graduated. Unfortunately, my few, younger, female cousins didn't receive a hope chest. I feel so lucky to have received one of the last wood projects my grandfather built.
In high school, I went through a super edgy/contemporary decorating phase, so when Grandpa asked what color I wanted my hope chest, I requested black. Beautiful, hardwood veneer and I wanted black. Oh well, tastes change. After going through a few moves and my active boys running around, the hope chest had seen better days.
I wanted a distressed, layered look but I didn't want the black to show through. To start, I mixed up some tan latex paint and brushed on one coat on evenly.
Next, I applied Vaseline around the areas that would naturally receive the most wear, followed by another coat of latex paint. This time, a medium, grey-blue.
Once that had dried. I sporadically brushed on Crackle Medium from Old Fashioned Paint Company.
I have used a number of crackle mediums before. In my opinion, the one from Old Fashioned Paint Company is the best. I provided a link below where you can find it.
I'm not really into the whole 90's, country look, so I don't want to create large, uniform cracks. I've discovered I can use this crackle medium to create awesome texture and chippyness.
Brush on the medium and let it dry thoroughly. The directions say to only brush one, smooth stroke of paint over the crackle medium and leave it alone. If you do that, you'll get those wide, 90's style cracks. What I do is brush on the paint, let it partially dry, then brush over it again. Play around with it till you get the texture you like.
For my final coat of paint, I mixed some CeCe Caldwell Pure White with the blue from the last coat.
To make it look more like an old trunk, I decided to add some labels. I headed over to The Graphics Fairy and found this vintage label and enlarged it 150%.
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| Courtesy of The Graphics Fairy |
I followed her tutorial How to Transfer Typography to Furniture and applied a logo to the front face and lid as well as a pair of "Fragile" stamps on each end.
My tip is to first use a plastic scraper to take off the majority of the paper before you start to rub off the excess.
Follow up with 220 grit sandpaper to clean up the label and distress the edges. Wipe clean and seal with 2 coats of matte Poly.
For the last step, I added decorative brass box corners. They started off a shiny, gold colored brass. I'll write up a tutorial down the road on how I create the tarnished look.
They can be hard to find locally. You most likely can get a better deal online.
And here is the final result.
It was hard to capture all the detail in photos. I really like how the darker blue peaks through.
This photo depicts the color the best.
Between the tan paint and the veins of black showing through, I think it looks a lot like wood. What do you think?
Here it is, back where it belongs at the foot of our bed.
It may not show off my grandpa's beautiful wood work, but I still think he would be proud.
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