Refinishing a Cedar Chest

Finished!

This project had two inspirations- one is a need to store our outdoor furniture cushions at the stuga when not in use. The second is an attempt to mimic the vibe of a rosemaled chest similar to the one at the Snyder Crow Wing cabin.

Top of trunk at Snyder cabin

Front of trunk

I purchased a Lane cedar trunk for $30 on Facebook marketplace in early Feb. It was badly painted with black latex paint. I looked up the serial number on the bottom and learned it was made in 1988 (37 years old), and thus just missed the cutoff date for the Lane chest lock recalls (i.e. it has a lock release inside in case someone gets trapped). An online description describes it as having wheatfield decorations in front, in a medium oak finish, with deep storage dimensions of 5.8 cubic feet. It was missing the key (I bought one on Ebay for $9.53) and a replacement for a missing spring lid support ($7.50).

As purchased

Someone had spilled paint or something on the lid, and then just painted over it. Gross.

First step was to take off the hardware and try to cut off the little decorative doo-dads on the bottom. I asked Cara to try her little hand-held jigsaw, but the wood proved too thick and tough. Once we'd started, though, I was committed, so I ended up cutting them off with a handsaw (pretty inaccurate and working up a big sweat) and cleaning the inevitable rough edges with my Dremel sanding drum attachment. 

Used my dressmaking curve tool to get a smooth cut line to remove the decorative scroll

Now it was time to strip the black paint. I'll summarize this to say it basically took an entire weekend of multiple coats of stripper and serious scraping elbow grease. The latex paint was like glue to get off. It was not fun. 

In between multiple efforts to remove the paint

Another view of the horrible stripping job in case I forget too soon

After stripping and scraping and stripping and scraping and using a lot of mineral spirits, I was left with a surface that no longer had paint, but had areas of old varnish that would not come off. It was time to start sanding, but this is a veneer, so I knew I needed to do it carefully. I did a combination of hand and electric sanding with small grit. 

Before sanding

After sanding, vacuuming and wiping with mineral spirits

After a coat of pre-stain wood conditioner

The pre-stain wood conditioner gave it a darker color right away, and then I followed up with 2 applications of oil based red chestnut stain, applying it with a rag.

Two coats of stain

I then made the rookie mistake of applying a coat of oil-based polyurethane, apparently too quickly after the stain. I'm used to working with water-based products (and it's not like I'm some big expert with those, either). The poly WOULD NOT DRY. I had a fan blowing on it for days. It didn't help that the  weather has been unseasonably cool and damp. Over a week later, in desperation, I wiped it all down with mineral spirits to remove excess poly, then stuck the whole thing in the sun on one of our few dry days. After, it was improved, but still tacky in places so I decided to stick it in the back of the garage for at least 30 days to cure.

After 6 weeks, I had time to take the next step, which was stenciling a design with acrylic paint. I found some rosemaling-style stencils online, and I would have bought them, but they were the wrong dimensions for this project. Instead, I opted to make my own stencils so I could get them just the right size. I cast my laptop to the TV, and played with the size of the images until I got them in the dimensions I wanted. Then I taped roll paper over the TV and carefully (so as not to damage the TV screen) traced the designs onto paper.

I then traced the paper designs onto clear mylar sheets with a Sharpie and cut the stencils using an $18 hot knife tool, which was time-consuming but much better then the stencil cutting I've done with an Exacto knife.

I carefully centered the stencils on the chest, taped them, and painted. I used the Jo Sonja acrylic paints I had on hand from my rosemaling projects. 

After painting with stencil

I went over each color 2-3 times (with dry time in between) then peeled up the stencils, lightly sanded the ridges that built up in places on the paint edges, and did a final touch up by hand. Then it was on to top coating, this time I didn't want to risk the oil polyurethane and went with satin water-based instead, 3 coats over the stenciled areas and one coat over the rest to even the sheen. I reinstalled the hardware, including adding the second spring lift where a previous one had obviously been.

Finally finished!

We secured the chest very carefully in our trailer for the transport to the stuga and got it there safely.