It’s finished!! I already did the first post on the exterior, and now the interior is done. I’m so happy with it! This is how the inside started…
It was covered with several layers of awful greenish grey paper. Surprisingly, all it took to scrape that off was wetting it with a sponge and scraping. Lots of scraping..
I didn’t really have a plan for the interior. Well, actually I had several plans, but I wanted to wait and see what exactly I had to work with when I was done with the scraping. I toyed with the idea of modpodging an old map on the underside of the top, or using some of these sheets from Home Depot..
But the wood was looking pretty decent on it’s own..
Not too shabby! I thought I’d try a little stain and see how it turned out…
I always think that natural wood is prettier than any painting or paper. Also, the curvature of the inside of the top would make covering it with any paper or vinyl tiles very tricky (ain’t nobody got time for that). Natural wood it is! Lastly, I added the side bars back on, where they were previously, and made a box for the interior.
(I’ll do a separate tutorial on making the box, don’t want to cram too much in one post.)
…and the finished product…
A few side notes….
The wood in the top of the trunk was definitely different from what was used to make the rest of it. Before I stained the interior all the wood looked the same, but after the stain, the top turned a yellowish brown while the rest was reddish. So, if you look at the tray insert in comparison to the top, it won’t quite match, while it does still match the rest of the trunk.
It took three coats of two different stains to get the new wood on the tray and sidebars to match the trunk. There could have been a stain that matched it identically, but who wants to buy more cans of stain when I already have so many sitting in the garage? One coat of Sedona Red and too coats of English Chestnut, both by Minwax, and it matched almost perfectly. Close enough for me!
It looks fantastic in the office where it’s sitting. Once that room is complete, I’ll post pictures of it in all of it’s pirate-y glory.
- a
- antique
- beautiful
- black
- building
- chest
- chestnut
- creative
- curvature
- curved
- DIY
- Do it yourself
- dome
- english
- estate sale
- grey paper
- hardware
- home depot
- how to
- ideas
- insert
- instructions
- minwax
- natural
- paint
- painting
- pirate
- red
- refurbish
- sedona
- sidebars
- stain
- steamer
- stencil
- thrift
- thrifty
- top
- Travel
- tray
- trunk
- tutorial
- vintage
- vinyl tiles
- wood
- yellowish brown
Two Thumbs 
CLASS ACT
That’s pretty amazing! Thanks for showing it!
Thanks for stopping by!
It looks beautiful! Where do you find these steamer trunks? How do you know if they are in decent condition?
I find a lot of trunks at Estate Sales. You see them in all ranges of conditions, from pristine to tragic. This one was somewhere in between. Aesthetically, it was in rough shape, but it was structurally (more or less) sound. You just have to inspect them and decide how much work you want to put into it.
Very nice work. Like you, I love the warmth of natural wood. Thanks for stopping by.
Beautiful job. I love it.
Such a lovely restoration job!!
Wow! The result is awesome! I really like it. Good job 🙂
Thanks! I loved your spikey ring!! so cute.
Absolutely beautiful!
Congratulations on the home improvement! You wrote on your About page that you didn’t know what to say. People have commented on mine that they enjoyed the specificty I provided. E.g., where did you grow up? Where did you go to college?
Gasp! I have an incredibly ugly steamer trunk that I have been wanting to refinish! Mine doesn’t have the dome top, but I want to use it for an end table, so the dome wouldn’t be very beneficial to me. Thanks for all the inspirations!