Once upon a time last spring Jay and I went to this cool salvage store/house in midtown Houston called Adkins Architectural Antiques. Inside is a lot of dirty old stuff, but once you get past the main rooms and wander into the back you find even dirtier older stuff. The attic of the bajillion year old house is where they put all the stuff that no one could ever possibly want ever (other peoples plastic trophies, a MacDonald's sign), and that's where we found this sad little trunk.
You'll have to forgive the pics in this first section, they were taken on Jay's iPhone many moons before we thought about blogging. Also, they appear to have some sort of smoke filter going on? I promise nothing was caught on fire in the rehab of this trunk.
Oh but wait, why were we moved to buy this disgusting piece of rotten wood and cardboard? Well I had the idea from my cousin Lydia, who has a long-time trunk obsession, that we could make a nightstand for Jay using an antique trunk. You know, since he's a pilot and travels a bunch and stuff. We scoured Craigslist for a few weeks, but couldn't find anything for less than $150. As you all know, Jay has a skewed idea of how much things cost and is horrified by any household object priced at more than $20 (yes, this includes rugs and furniture). He was keeping his alarm clock on phone charger on the floor, which admittedly isn't super aesthetically pleasing, but it wasn't my alarm clock on the floor so I gave up worrying about it. Boys, amiright?
But then, one fateful day in midtown in a nasty hot attic we found this looker of a trunk for, guess what? $20. Eureka? Anyways, here's the before pics. I wish I could someone transmit the smell through the internet so you guys could get the full experience. Suffice to say I began to call it the Tuberculosis Trunk and made it live outside shortly after these photos were taken.
Oh but wait, why were we moved to buy this disgusting piece of rotten wood and cardboard? Well I had the idea from my cousin Lydia, who has a long-time trunk obsession, that we could make a nightstand for Jay using an antique trunk. You know, since he's a pilot and travels a bunch and stuff. We scoured Craigslist for a few weeks, but couldn't find anything for less than $150. As you all know, Jay has a skewed idea of how much things cost and is horrified by any household object priced at more than $20 (yes, this includes rugs and furniture). He was keeping his alarm clock on phone charger on the floor, which admittedly isn't super aesthetically pleasing, but it wasn't my alarm clock on the floor so I gave up worrying about it. Boys, amiright?
But then, one fateful day in midtown in a nasty hot attic we found this looker of a trunk for, guess what? $20. Eureka? Anyways, here's the before pics. I wish I could someone transmit the smell through the internet so you guys could get the full experience. Suffice to say I began to call it the Tuberculosis Trunk and made it live outside shortly after these photos were taken.
Yeah so you've probably figured out that we were too excited at the store to have found a cheap trunk to really investigate the terrible shape it was in. It was after Jay began to pull it apart that I tried to convince him that it was wayyyyy too full of pathogens and we should continue looking for another one. However, Jay was smitten with his nasty new project so he removed and replaced the rotten wood, peeled off the old lining paper, removed the borders (which were made out of cardboard) and gave the whole thing a good scrubbing.
We decided that we wanted to keep the original green color of the outside, but thought leather would give it a really sleek, expensive look. I personally was hoping for some sort of ostrich or mock-ostrich but Jay really like the basic moss green, and since its his nightstand he got to pick. But seriously how cool would ostrich have been?
We decided that we wanted to keep the original green color of the outside, but thought leather would give it a really sleek, expensive look. I personally was hoping for some sort of ostrich or mock-ostrich but Jay really like the basic moss green, and since its his nightstand he got to pick. But seriously how cool would ostrich have been?
Anyways, he bought this green full hide on eBay for $90 with the intent to use half of it and then sell the half hide again on eBay. We used some cardboard boxes to make a template of the sides of the trunk that would be covered in leather and used a sharpie to mark the edges and cut them out. You can see it just barely fit in a half hide. Fab. To attach the leather to the wood we used a staple gun and some spray glue. Quick and easy.
Next we new we wanted to use metal for the edges, and Jay decided to paint them brown to go with the original look of the trunk and to not look overly industrial. He got strips of metal, cut them to size, bent them to fit around the corner of the trunk and pre-drilled holes for the rivets before priming and spray-painting them a nice glossy brown.
Next we new we wanted to use metal for the edges, and Jay decided to paint them brown to go with the original look of the trunk and to not look overly industrial. He got strips of metal, cut them to size, bent them to fit around the corner of the trunk and pre-drilled holes for the rivets before priming and spray-painting them a nice glossy brown.
This shot below shows the original rusty corner pieces after Jay sanded them down and cleaned them up. He used a Dremel tool and a grinder to get them nice and silver again. These little metal pieces were by far the most time-consuming part of this project, and we considered buying new ones but Jay really wanted to keep as much of the original character as possible.
I'm not sure if he really thought rivets would be the most secure, best way to attach the metal, or if he just wanted to buy a rivet gun (probably the latter), but they turned out to work really well for both function and style.
He used a larger size of rivet to secure the hinges and locks to the front of the trunk. Same steps as for the sides, first pre-drill, then rivet gun.
For some reason I don't remember Jay was really interested in me taking pictures of him measuring and taping this front lock. Something boring about it being square and level and blah blah blah.
The end product turned out really great. Its the perfect size and a nice masculine touch to our borderline girly bedroom. Jay also made our awesome barn door headboard, but that's for a future post!