Connecting Pieces: Look What Just Arrived in my Studio

I am now the owner of this
hand made antique jeweler's bench

and it now sits in my studio.
This is an account of how I obtained
and then cleaned this jeweler's bench.

August the 19th was my daughter Rachel's birthday.

Rachel wanted to go junking for her birthday.
My mom, daughter in law Felicia

and Rachel took our seats in the Ford Flex
and headed out for

an adventure.

Felicia had never been

junking so she really did not know what

she was in for.
We dragged her to garage sales, yard sales,

storage sales, estate sales

and even a foreclosure sale.
We saw some good stuff,

some bad stuff and a lot of dirt.

Felicia was a trooper.
Before we wrapped it up for the day

I thought we all needed a trip to an antique store.
That is were I found this piece.

When I saw this cabinet in the antique store all I was

thinking was,"I have to have this piece, the price is right

and it is wonderful."

I did not look in the drawers and I did not have a flash light.

(lesson learned)

As you can see when I got this piece up to my studio

I was in for a lot of sweet equity.

This was the dirtiest piece of furniture I have ever come across.

I started the cleaning by wiping the whole thing
down with Murphy's Oil soap.
That is when I saw that several of the drawers needed
to be repaired.
I was able to fix them with a
little wood glue and some wire brads and all was well.
While fixing the drawers I realized just how dirty
they were (dirty is being kind).

I was going to have to resort to drastic measures
to get the inside of these drawers clean.
(Now I do not suggest doing this, I only got
away with it because the wood in this cabinet
is a good hardwood).
I used a spray bleach and a small amount of water
with a scrub brush.
I would spray, scrub, then rinse with a very small amount of water.
Then I would wipe out the drawer and remove all the water.
I would then came back with more bleach
and a tooth brush so that I could get into the corners.
With a scrubbing sponge I scrubbed some more.
This was quite a process and took a long time
but it did work and my drawers are very clean.

The outside of my cabinet needed some more cleaning as well,
years and years of wax and grime were evident.
I had already used the oil soap but it needed something more.
I didn't want to remove the
aged patina or ruin the "look",
so I took a sanding sponge and lightly sanded the hole piece.