My grandma who is 93 has a cedar chest my mom is going to use in her quilt shop. Back in the day if you really liked a girl, you gave her a cedar chest. Her sister was given two and didn’t need both, so gave this one to Grandma. She must have been popular ;0). To match the rest of the color scheme in the Quilt shop we decided to paint it pink!
The veneer had started to really peel off on one side and since it was going to be painted, we finished peeling it to have a smooth surface to paint. The other holes and chips we repaired with Bondo prior to painting.
I wasn’t sure what kind of glue they would have used to put this together, it might be old enough for hide glue, but maybe not. Either way we decided that a little heat couldn’t hurt anything and might actually help us out. Mom came up with a heat gun and razor scraper and it didn’t take long to remove the last of the veneer exposing the cedar wood.
We sanded the rest of the chest to buff the finish enough our paint would stick and wiped it down. I like to make home made chalk paint on these kinds of projects and added a little calcium carbonate mixed in water to the paint. I would guess about a tablespoon per paint sample container of flat paint.
The homemade chalk paint dries really quickly, so it didn’t take long to get a couple of coats of paint on the chest. Once they were dry I applied a very, very thin layer of Crystal Clear Varathane to protect the flat paint from fingerprints. Within a few hours of starting, we had a newly spruced up chest to display quilts in.
I can’t wait for all the other little projects to come together so I can see all the cute fabric sitting on the shelves!
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