I found this armoire for free, just a few blocks away. It had seem some hard use, but two days of Danger tinkering and she is ready to travel to the Montana ranch (she’ll nearly fill the bed of the truck).
3 Part Armoire. Mirrored Door. The biggest triage was making new interlocking boards between the drawer section and the closet section. Simple in theory, but it needs to align perfectly so when they seat together they seal tight. I had to wait for E to come home to help lift the closet on and off to set the pieces.Steel wool carrying beeswax with orange-oil loosened black grime and paint splatter. It wiped away with a sacrificial microfiber towel cut into sections for degrees of yutz.Both inlay panels are intact and cleaned up nicely.Fleur de Inlay with flaming grail.The door hardware is intact. Twist the hoop and now the latch catches and releases. I have an old skeleton key at the ranch that will likely fit the lock.The center rear panel is new birch, still debating whether to stain it. The side panels just needed their tops and bottoms trimmed to fit and lots of fresh staples. A piece of oak is just behind the bottom edge of the door, securing the wall to the floor. The weight and pressure of the door had shattered the old bit of wood holding things together there. It was a few hours of fiddling to get that one detail to come together.Also added in; a clothes hanger rod. This took some new supports for the walls.The bottom of the drawer needed reattaching, and a side wall dovetail connecting to the face board had split out and needed glue with a long clamp overnight. The lateral runner bars needed resetting, and I added a back bumper strip to act as a stop. Last week’s triage was repainting a portion of the bathroom door. First, removal of hardware.I stripped the door down to the wood, removing old stinky lead paint. Then repainted and reassembled and rehung. This was necessary after using Costco’s mild bleach cleaning wipes around the door handle for a few years- it melted the binders in the paint.There is a blizzard at the ranch, and here it will drop into the 30’s with rain and wind- so we moved all the deck plants back into the sunroom. The fig tree is blocking half the room, and I can hardly open the door. The sliding glass door is completely blocked as well. Things got big this summer!
