Red Storage Chest for Kelbi

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I love doing custom work for people and especially for friends and family. I get a kick out of the surprise!

So about a months and a half ago, a colleague friend of mine asked me to find/make something for her husband to use to corral the doggie stuff that is on their front porch. I was more that happy to start the hunt!

As it turns out two weeks prior to the call, I had found a metal chest at a local thrift store that I wanted to get for an end table/storage and talked myself out of it that day!!!!  Gah, when she called that was the first thing I thought of to use and about punched myself for not picking it up.  I immediately went there to see if by chance it had been looked over and guess what?????

Those things are never there when you go back……except this ONE time!

It was still there and had stuff piled on top of it, so it was meant to be. It was in rough shape but as you know, paint can work wonders.

Here she is in her pre-restored state:

We had some dents to bang out but a rubber mallet works well with this along with a piece of wood covered in some cloth held on the other side. That way you aren't making dents come out on the other side!

After I gave the chest a good washing and sanding, I gave it two coats of red oil-based paint since it was going to be residing outside. Since their dog Kelbi is a lab I decided to do a retro look with a lab silhouette. I used an overhead projector to do this and then hand-painted the rest. 

It is very important when you are doing a stencil or hand-painting over two surfaces (lid plus base as is pictured here above or two drawers, etc.) that you finish the inside/top edges. It makes it look more finished in my opinion. 

So here is Kelbi's chest all finished!

I added some handles out of an old black belt and used my rivet gun to attach. I love how the white rivets play off the black belt and tie into the whole retro feel.

All of the graphic was painted in oil-based paint as well and I added a top coat of oil-based poly on the graphic just to add a layer of durability. I don't want Kelbi to wear off! Now Kelbi is a yellow lab so after I painted the whole thing, I thought, "CRUDE! I should have done the lab image in a yellow!" But then I thought it would lose it's vintage/retro feel so I kept it all black, red, and white.

Here's a nice view from the side that shows the handle detail a bit better. Some of the dents would not come out so so easily so instead of beating the chest to death I got the major dents out and the rest "add character" as we like to say.

I hope Kelbi likes his new storage chest, I know I love it!

Always being renewed,

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