My daughter bought an old trunk at a yard sale for $5.00. It had been painted some god awful color and was in need of either burning or throwing in the landfill. I looked at it and thought this would be a great project that should relatively easy to complete, wrong. After starting the dismantling I saw how much this thing has been neglected and abused through the years. So I ordered some canvas for the outside and attached it to the shell with a high powered glue. I then found some old-timey shellac and painted it on the canvas, hoping to give it an old look. That worked pretty good. The wood of the shell was very dry and brittle so I had to be very careful pulling the 10,000 original nails that were bent over on their points for a secure hold. I ordered some copper nails to accent the hardware and also to hold the leather strips that I put on the corners. The strips on the top are cherry that my father gave me and on the inside there is some mahogany strips that I had. I finally decided to put cedar on the inside so it could be used for storage of blankets and other stuff.
So after about a year of working on this thing, it's finally finished. I would cuss it everytime I would start on it, "Why didn't you let her paint it"? Now that it's done, I already miss working on it.
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