Grandma’s Trunk

Anyone Who Knows Me Well, Knows My Obsession With Boxes

The "Before" Shot

I was lucky enough to snag Grandma’s trunk at her estate auction (actually, my Great Grandmother’s originally).

The front panel is embossed tin with a scallop design. The back, bottom, and sides are plain tin with wooden supports. Its 3 or 4 layers of paint had seen better days. The leather handles were broken and the interior was damaged, flaking, and just plain yucky.

I emailed detailed photos to 2 separate professional restorers and both of them indicated that they would have to replace up to 80% of the original materials in order to repair it properly. I wasn’t interested in “showroom quality” but I would have liked to replace the handle hardware and leather.

A large financial investment aside, I just didn’t see the point in ending up with only 20% of the original trunk . . . so I decided to see what I could do myself.

I had to paint in our basement because it was cold and wet outside. Unfortunately , the paint fumes were horrendous. Remind me to wait for Spring the next time!

6 coats of fresh paint later . . .

Screaming White

OK, so that was the outside of the trunk. Now what about the inside?

I couldn’t completely remove all of the paper liner in the trunk. I used a hairdryer to loosen some of it, but there where quite a few places in the bottom of the trunk that were adhered so tightly to the tin and wood that I feared I would damage the surface areas if I disturbed them further.

So, I dug into my stash of quilting squares and grabbed some Mod Podge (I was saving both for other projects . . . but what the heck, huh?) and came up with a possible solution.

Oh, Boy. This looks like a train wreck in the making.

It initially didn’t look good for the home team. Though all of the squares were cotton, each square seemed to have its own individual reaction to the glue. I also neglected to account for shrinkage when they dried. Luckily, all of the weird spots dried up and I was able to reposition the pieces that shrunk after the glue application.