Okay, I'll just admit right up front that I once carried home a yard sale find that was a true piece of junk. It happened fourteen years ago and, alas, we don't have a picture of the chest at its ugliest. It was covered in a garish, oil-based paint which proved difficult to remove. To call the color burgundy would be kind.
David said it looked like a chest that his grandmother left on her back porch back in the rainy Ozarks. Later, he said please don't bring home anymore furniture in such dire need of repair; he had a house to build.
I stripped the offending paint from the wood and found the framework and drawers to be of a much different sort of wood than the side panels. The side panels were falling off the frame; removal was necessary to rebuild the chest. What a surprise awaited us on the inside of the panels--they were made of a wooden refrigerator crate!
Early Yarnellians made good use of every resource because hauling materials up 4,800 feet was never easy. The chest was among the remnants of an estate sale of a woman, aged ninety plus, who had been a long-time resident. I like to think that her husband made the chest as a loving Valentine, birthday or anniversary gift.
The interior of the drawers had seen lots of wear and tear, so I scrubbed them clean then decoupaged sentimental cards and pictures of favorite flowers. One from a student who begins her message, "It's been two long years we've been together...". (Indeed, it had been; this one didn't want to learn to read or write.) I love it because she now gives me hugs and tells me news from college.
Yes, I did have too much time on my hands when I devoted so much to restoring the lingerie chest. I did it before we began any building and one can only cut brush for so long before the creative needs take precedence.
The wooden side panels were soft, full of snags and small gashes so I decoupaged them with some botanical prints of roses. We found some rosy drawer pulls at Home Depot to complete both appearance and function as the chest was missing any sort of pull (in the Ozarks, my ancestors would have used wooden sewing spools for pulls) .
The girly chest has held my unmentionables now all these years and patiently awaits its final move into a spacious closet. HINT! HINT! HINT!
Not to be too pushy, in his own good time, David will make a fabulous closet.
FROM THE KNOTHOLE: Hi folks. It's me. Up here. Peeking into Badboulderlady's lingerie chest. So, little children and old men with weak hearts, hide your eyes. Wow, did you see those fishnets? Woooeee! Let me tell you, that chest was a real piece of junk when she brought it home. I spent days and days trying to patch it together. And then, Badboulderlady did her thing, again many days of scraping, and papering, and gluing, and painting, and layers of this and that. I suppose it is sort of pretty, but a good thing its contents are very lightweight. But, we're saving money. Buy a piece of junk for a buck, bring it home and work on it for weeks, maybe years. Yup, we got a bargain. I am spent. Could somebody give me a hug?
a parting shot from bbman: a prize in every box. cracker jacks
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