The Trash Picked Trunk

One day "my biggest fan" was driving home from work and while passing my neighbor's house at the bottom of our hill he spied an old trunk sitting by their trash.  Well he knows me too well so he reported this to me upon walking in the door.  I had never seen anything good down there before, so I told him that I would have to look at it my self.  Next morning on my way to work I saw it, and immediately called him and told him if it was still there when he came home from work to "go get it".  Being the kind of person that he is, he stopped and thought that he would let the neighbors know that he was going to take it off their hands,  if it was ok.  Long story, but he loaded it in his truck and brought it home.  When I first saw it, I thought Oh My Goodness, what the heck am I going to do with this!  It was is really bad shape, but it had this really awesome embossed tin detail, it was rusted in places, and the tin was all torn and rough on the edges. Someone, I assume the last owners, "the neighbors" had put this...well, I think it was some type of a buffing pad on one corner of the bottom of it. It was attached with the biggest nail you have ever seen!   I am sure it was a quick fix to prop it up, as it was missing a piece on the bottom. "Hey honey go get that buffing pad off of your car buffer thingy so I can prop up this trunk". The inside was covered in the  most unbelievable blue swirly (with a white background) sticky contact paper!  Fortunately for me, the contact paper had been on there so long that  it had lost a lot of its "sticky"!  It sat in my garage for the last year. Every time I got in my car I would just looking at it thinking... that is a lot of work.  Recently I got up my ambition  and loaded  it onto my work table and started pulling off the "unsticky" contact paper. Underneath the unsticky contact paper was the original paper lining that was flaking off at an alarming rate!  You could blow on it and it would come off!  Now  this is were I get really mad at my self!  I took a before picture, and then later realized I DELETED it by mistake! I had a great picture of that buffing pad too.... darn it!  But I did get some shots of it while it was getting worked on.  The tin on the edge of the trunck was really rough and torn and, well frankly it was dangerous, so "my biggest fan" and I had to do some repair work on it.  I got to use contact cement for the first time!!!! That was fun, oh and lots and lots of clamps.  Do you think it is over kill on the clamps? 

 

From these pictures you can see the rust spots.   I forgot to mention that the last owners or someone really "with it" in the 70's antiqued it, bless their hearts!  We also added some feet to it, because you know it had that piece missing on the bottom.  That  leveled it up and will keep it from scratching the floor. I was thinking about keeping the buffing pad on it, but I lost that really big nail.   So below is the finished product.

 The Embossed Detail

The Inside - Lined with Burlap 

 I used a dark Brown Paint and dry brushed over the embossed detail with a copper metallic and used a rub on varnish over all.  What do you think?