A few weeks back one of my readers contacted me and asked if I wanted to purchase some pieces from her (she’s another one moving to Florida!).

Most of what she was selling was too big for me, I no longer take on full dining sets or large hutches.  But she did have this cedar chest …

I have to admit, the wood on this is pretty.  The finish on the top was a bit damaged, but could have been stripped and refinished and it would have been lovely.  But I wanted to go in a different direction.

I started by removing the carved medallion thingie in the middle on the front.

That wasn’t going to work with my plan.

After filling the tiny nail holes with some of Dixie Belle’s Mud, I cleaned the entire piece, and then scuff sanded it.  Next up I gave it a coat of Dixie Belle’s B.O.S.S. to prevent stain or wood tannins from bleeding through my paint.

By the way, all of this is happening on the outside.  This is a cedar lined trunk, so naturally I left that lining alone.

Next up came two coats of Dixie Belle’s Sawmill Gravy.

Then I pulled out a Gregory’s Catalogue paint inlay from I.O.D. that I had already used one time.  They say you can get up to three uses out of a paint inlay, but I’ve found that even a 2nd use can be a dicey proposition.  I have managed to use one of these a 2nd time on some smaller projects (here and here), but both times I mentioned that the inlay paper comes off in pieces after that 2nd use, eliminating any chance of a 3rd use.

But this time I was using full sheets rather than smaller sections of the inlay, and frankly, after about 30 minutes of trying to remove the paper in ever smaller bits and pieces I just gave up.

FYI, I took that photo after the paper had dried again.  But yes, I was getting it plenty wet when attempting to remove it.

This was a lot like trying to remove wallpaper that just won’t come off, except you really can’t use a scraper, and you can’t really rub too hard, because that will smear the paint inlay.

But you know what?  After giving it some thought, I decided this was a chance to start over.  I felt like the fresh paint job was looking far too … well … fresh, and I really wanted this trunk to look old.  So I got out my orbital sander and sanded that paint inlay backing paper off.

Then I pulled out some of Dixie Belle’s texture additive, Sea Spray.  I decided to give the trunk a textured undercoat in a color that could peek through the final color.  I ended up deciding on Dixie Belle’s Gravel Road for that.  I gave the entire piece one coat of straight Gravel Road first, then I mixed up some more of the paint with the Sea Spray.

I used a chip brush to stipple the mixture onto the piece here and there, wherever I wanted to have some texture.  Once that was dry, I added a coat of Sawmill Gravy over it.

Once the paint was dry, I sanded back the areas with the Sea Spray to create some faux chipping.

Then, I applied a brand new Gregory’s Catalogue paint inlay (for full instructions on applying a paint inlay, check out this post).

I’m not going to sugar coat it, it’s a bit of a bummer that this inlay costs nearly $50, and I will likely only get one full use out of it.

But, how else are you going to create this look?

You certainly can’t find any stencils with wording this large.  And there aren’t any transfers that look like this.  I suppose if you’re quite talented you could do this free-hand, but I don’t have that skill, or that kind of patience.

The paint inlay was an almost perfect fit for this trunk.  I say ‘almost’, because I did have to do a little re-arranging of the layout to get it to fit nicely.  I had to work around those carved details on either side of the front of the trunk, so I moved the ‘Vegetable, Flower and Grain’ line to the bottom.

As it was, the beginning and ending of the line overlapped that carving a bit, and the paint inlay did not lay flat on those ends.

But that was easy to fix later by filling in some blank spots using a small artist’s brush and some of Dixie Belle’s Caviar paint.

This trunk would be perfect for using at the foot of the bed filled with either extra bedding, or your bulky winter sweaters.  In fact, it’s probably big enough to hold both.

It would also work well in a foyer to hold shoes, and it’s certainly sturdy enough that you could sit on it while taking your boots off.

I suppose it would also make a reasonable toy box, but personally I wouldn’t let children with crayons to get too close.

I’m sure not everyone would have been in favor of painting this trunk, but I love the way it turned out.

How about you?

This trunk is for sale locally, check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page for more details.

As always, thank you to Dixie Belle Paint Co for providing the Mud, B.O.S.S., Sea Spray, and paint used on this project.