A Piece of History - My Cedar Chest and How I Refinished It

One of the main reasons I went down to Tennessee was to retrieve a cedar chest that had been passed down in my family and that I thought had long been thrown away. Much to my surprise and subsequent delight, I found out that in fact it had not been thrown away; my dad moved it down with his things to Tennessee.

I don't know the exact history of the chest because, unfortunately, everyone on my mother's side with information about it has passed away. I can say that this piece has incalculable sentimental value for me as it is the last and only piece of furniture I have from my mother's family. The rest has either been given or thrown away. I look back and only wish I had had the money at the time to put those pieces in storage or somehow hang onto them as it would mean so much to have them. But, I suppose that's one of the life lessons we learn: don't obsess over material things. Anyway.

As one might expect, the chest showed signs of wear, tear, and scars from moving around all these years. In other words, it looked like crap and was covered in scratches. So I decided that before school started I would take on the project of refinishing it.

I'm sorry to report that I neither have before pictures nor progress pictures. Even as I started I thought about taking them, but was always wearing gloves and dealing with harsh chemicals. Frankly, the project became a bigger task than I thought and my patience dwindled when it came to stopping and taking photos.

So here's an idea of what the chest looked like before. Picture dingy brown and the whole thing looking like a cat used it as a scratch post.

This is almost as bad as mine looked. Think way more scratchy and chippy.
But this is pretty accurate for the previous stain color. Blek.

Ahhhh, but here is the reward. After about a week of stripping the wood, sanding, conditioning the wood, sanding, staining the wood, sanding, staining again, sanding, and finally applying the polyurethane coat, the glorious and satisfying results (sorry for the bad lighting):

All in all, I love how it turned out considering I had to sneakily do all this in the basement of my apartment building with cruddy lighting and limited ventilation. It's not perfect, but you can't really tell unless you stick your face up in it.

I discovered that refinishing furniture isn't that hard, it's a decently therapeutic activity, and I would love to take on another project in the future.

(It was also a fun way to save money. For $600, a professional could have done it whereas I spent a little under $100 to do it myself!)