Labor of Love

When your sister and mother ask if we can fix the leg of Grandma’s 1920’s hope chest, my immediate response is “Yes” without even looking at it. This is probably NOT the response Dave likes me to give, but I was confident that we can fix a leg of a chest. …and when I say “we,” I mean “he,” but with some help from me. Well, at least I call it “help.”

For a little background, this chest was given to my grandmother as a wedding gift from my grandfather in the late 1920’s, so no pressure on doing a good job and not messing up this project.

A lot of damage needs a lot of love

At first sight, this old hope chest needed A LOT of hope. One leg was broken, while the others were really dinged, scratched, and loose. The top was worn out and scratched. Matter of fact, there were dings and scratches just about all over, as well as missing parts. There was a missing trim around the lid, and something that appeared to have been at the bottom center of the chest.

The manufacturer label was still intact, as well as branded on the inside. This helped in my research to learn more about the company and how to keep this piece in line with the time in which it was created. When you are dealing with a pretty old cedar and veneer chest, you really want to keep it as true to the original as possible.

West Branch Novelty Company was established in 1893, and their initial efforts were entirely on making bamboo furniture. They prided themselves on “originality of design,” and this cedar chest was not exception. I was original.

It was not until 1910 that the company began making cedar chests, which became the most important single line of merchandise produced by the West Branch Novelty Company. If you ever research cedar chests from West Branch, you will find a myriad of designs.

Dave started this project by asking himself, “What was I thinking?” Then, he disassembled the lid, making sure to keep the original hardware, including the flathead screws. Matter of fact, Dave bought additional vintage flathead screws of different sizes to be able to use for this project. When this particular chest was made, Phillips screws did not yet exist.

Fast forward through this project, Dave cleaned the entire chest, and he used Goo Gone to remove stuck on duct tape from the chest. And why wouldn’t there be duct tape? It fixes everything!

Dave spent many days working on the lid. He repaired all of the split veneer across the back edge of the lid and lightly sanded the top and inside.

A good coat of stain was applied, but Dave soon realized he had to repair a couple areas of the veneer where it was lifted from the top. When the repair was dry, Dave sanded and stained the entire top to blend the repaired areas into the rest of the lid.

Dave then moved to the legs, pulling out all of the dowels, and then added new oak dowels to join the leg pieces back together. Dave used wood filler to repair the dings and split wood on each leg, as well as edges and corners of the entire chest where there were heavy gouges.

Side note: Dave found my name written on one of the side pieces of the back legs. I do not recall when I wrote my name on it (definitely an awfully long time ago), but it was my handwriting, so I am guilty as charged.

On the bottom center of the chest, you can tell that something was once there, so Dave and I came up with a design that was complimentary to the piece. Dave made a mold from Impressive Putty One Part Re-Usable Mold Making Putty to make a copy of the onlay. This was used to create a bottom decorative piece from wood filler and wood hardener to match the onlay on the front side of the chest. The bottom center piece was designed to mirror the side pieces of the leg. This was NOT an easy task to say the least, but we survived and remain married. I kid! I kid!

Since the bottom trim for the lid was missing, Dave’s original design, although nice, was not quite what I had in mind. So after a little “discussion,” Dave bought a 1910 fir trim mold casing that he found online. He ripped the casing to size and routed the design to be the inverse of the bottom edge of the chest. This is probably my absolute favorite part of the chest. Dave took great care, and a ton of effort, to make this trim appear to have always been part of the chest. Truly an amazing job!

Dave lightly sanded some imperfections all over the chest. It was a joint effort to stain the chest with multiple stains. We used Honey, Dark Walnut, and Red Cedar to compliment the varying colors within the chest. To finish off the chest, Dave applied lacquer when the stain was dry, and then he used steel wool, Weiman Furniture Cream Cleaner & Polish, and then wiped it down with a microfiber cloth to buff and polish the chest.

This project took about six weeks, as Dave worked on this when time permitted. As always, Dave did such an amazing job with the woodwork. He is so super-talented, and I appreciate all the hard work, effort, and attention to extreme detail that he put into this project. No doubt that Dave put his heart and soul into this ol’ cedar chest, and to see my Mom and Dad happy with the outcome was priceless. Grandma would be proud.