An old filing cabinet module that belonged to my Grandfather. I was obsessed with my grandfather’s workspace when I was a kid. He did a lot of electronic work … televisions, radios, amplifiers…. Of the many many fixtures in his shop (one of which was a collection of vacuum tubes I’ll never see the likes of again), this was central to my understand of creative spaces and remains a central fixture in my shop to this day.
Like too many of my jobs, there aren’t many good before photos. I generally don’t think to take them while I’m analyzing a situation. What I can tell you is that I remember this being exactly the way it turned out with the exception of the cards (of which all but one were thrown out) being new. It was to be that specific a restoration, not to “new” but to “as remembered.
For strength, the sides and face frame were squared to the raised panel back … nails, which initially held the piece together, were replaced with screws .. all non moving joints were rejoined and clamped and a pressure treated base was affixed, basically only to serve the purpose of being in a wet basement. I had wanted to make new side panels at the time but I was terribly under tooled in my shop and have just not gotten around to it since … heck with it anyway, I wanted it to look as I remembered and it never had finished side panels as long as I knew it.
CONN. GENERAL 2557A HOME OFFICE. I’d not seen this tag in years. My grandfather had taken to testing his ill matching paints on the top and front of the unit … to, uh, make sure they didn’t match? To make sure they were still liquid? Either way, he put a lot of paint on this thing. It was pretty great to get all that off.
The more reddish color what what I remembered of it. After the first coat of gel poly dried, I mixed up some “brownish red” tint in some spray poly to burn in a few places where paint removal turned into finish removal. I left some test spots on the side for historical accuracy … if they were the exact ones I remember, I’m not sure.
All of the brass was ok. I did a light directional sanding on the front of the handles, some had been replaced leaving the originals with that brushed finish and the replacements without. Nothing got too too polished but for the screw heads. For some reason that struck me as “correct”.
The “Drills” card was the only one left from the time it was in my grandfathers basement and so it remains. The other memory I had was that when my grandfather labeled his Plumbing drawer, he wrote “Plum” to big and had to switch to underneath that to write the “Bing” so “Plumbing” to me will always be “Plum Bing” and is to be labeled as such.
She’s still hanging together in her third home since she had her work done. I still haven’t made sides for it and likely won’t. I’m always on the lookout for another one but MAN ALIVE do people want money for stuff like this these days. I’m sure my grandfather would at seeing those prices say something to the effect of “For that piece a CRAP?”…
Custom Job 