#restoration – bushboys world

What to do

Published on March 29, 2023 by bushboy29 Comments

Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge: Improvise

A while ago I bought an old wooden suitcase with the aim to restore it and sell. I bought it for $20 and it wasn’t in the best of condition. I stripped it down and tried to tidy the bits and pieces. It was basically made from plywood and was a fit difficult to replace the parts that were broken.

I kept most of the hardware, the hinges, handle and locks but had to replace the corner protectors as a few were bent or missing. I bought a set for less than $10. The old one is on the right. I rather like the new ones which are a bit more ornate.

Once I had it almost finished I thought it looked not all that good. The repairs to the wood on the outside were hard to get matched to the original so I decided to paint the case black. The interior needed a bit of a lift so a few pages of old music books were used to line the inside.

I put the finished suitcase on the local Buy, Swap and Sell FB site. A young lad bought it for $60 and he was going to use it to carry his bagpipes around.

A song to go with the finished suitcase

Macro Monday – 25 October

Published on October 25, 2021October 24, 2021 by bushboy2 Comments

The cupboard’s journey

Published on February 3, 2021 by bushboy39 Comments

OK due to popular demand here is a bit more about the cupboard that featured on my Last on the Card post. My bestie used to like on an old property which had under gone a few changes over the hundred plus years of its existence. Like many farms back then they did everything on farm. Having a dig around the place there were old remnants of the farm. The old dairy bails were converted into a guest house.

The cupboard was made from the scraps of wood that was lying around and was in a bad condition. Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos before I dismantled it almost a year ago. I wasn’t going to make it any different than it was so I just basically put it back together again.

So this is a bit about what I did. The drawers didn’t work at all and I was told they never did.. A new bit for the drawers was made. You can see the damage to the wood but being old timber, it was surprisingly sound.

The new section for the drawers glued and clamped

The drawers are in good condition. The crack doesn’t go all the way through, it’s just on the surface of the drawers bottom.

Putting the top back on with some of the tools used to restore the cupboard.

Doors back on. My part of the history of the cupboard is the new hinges and barrel bolt. Even among the shelves, jars and boxes of old stuff I couldn’t find the right hinges or door closer that looked old.

The photo that started it all.

The other part of this shed project was the shelves. At one stage there was a set of shelves that sat on top of the cupboard. These shelves are now going to be stand alone shelves. This is the before