Project Information
This project was totally inspired by skogie1 and his forum post and project of his own chest with hidden compartment. With my two nieces being 8 and 5 I knew this was the year to see if I could get them to buy into an adventure.
I went in a slightly different direction than skogie1. His chest is much nicer than mine while my aim was to make the chest look as old and decrepit as possible. It is made out of pine and whitewood bought from home depot and then burned, wire brushed, stained, and burned it again. The hidden compartment isn't a drawer and it's not obvious that there should be one. The girls will have to discover it on their own. The front baseboard is held in place with a couple of dowels.
As you can see from the scratchings on the bottom of the chest, it belonged to "Sara Smith" in 1897. I chose the name because both my nieces have names that start with S. I may carve some initials on the top and that way the S's can do double duty.
The map is of my parent's property where we will have Christmas (the girls' presents will be in the top of the chest which I "found" in the old barn on their property). The last picture is of the tin that will be buried in a field west of an apple tree (which has grown from the "apple pile" noted on the old map). The map was drawn on a piece of scrap leather with a burned stick. I'm planning on putting a rock in the hidden compartment as well so it will rattle when the chest is moved and tip them off that there is something there.
I went in a slightly different direction than skogie1. His chest is much nicer than mine while my aim was to make the chest look as old and decrepit as possible. It is made out of pine and whitewood bought from home depot and then burned, wire brushed, stained, and burned it again. The hidden compartment isn't a drawer and it's not obvious that there should be one. The girls will have to discover it on their own. The front baseboard is held in place with a couple of dowels.
As you can see from the scratchings on the bottom of the chest, it belonged to "Sara Smith" in 1897. I chose the name because both my nieces have names that start with S. I may carve some initials on the top and that way the S's can do double duty.
The map is of my parent's property where we will have Christmas (the girls' presents will be in the top of the chest which I "found" in the old barn on their property). The last picture is of the tin that will be buried in a field west of an apple tree (which has grown from the "apple pile" noted on the old map). The map was drawn on a piece of scrap leather with a burned stick. I'm planning on putting a rock in the hidden compartment as well so it will rattle when the chest is moved and tip them off that there is something there.