Moms Hope Chest Restored

Theres a long story behind this chest so I will keep it short, Me and my Dad made this for my Mom back in 91/92 but the real story is about the Mahogany, me and my Dad had to replace the motor on my Grandmothers house fan in the house my Dad grew up in in South Tampa which my Grandmother and Grandfather built around 1920 and when we were in the attic we noticed that the planks that was installed when the house was built were anywhere between 18” and 20” wide and when we cleaned some of the dust off and wet one of the boards I can remember my Dad saying it couldnt be but it was they were all Mahogany and there were 12 boards total with the shortest bieng 12’ and the longest 16’ we had to remove the gable vent just to remove them from the attic. jump to the present with the years and some of the choices that were made storing the chest wasnt the best and the last place was in a shed which flooded and rotted the bottom around the edges which couldnt be saved to reinstall once I restored it so I used cedar this time which works well and gives the classic smell and will keep the bugs away, the chest didnt have legs before so I went ahead and added them incase it was stored in a place were water might get to it (its back in the house), the lid is actually Pecky Cypress because my Dad did the carving on the lid and he didnt want to use one of the Mahogeny planks plus with the cypress it has the worm holes running through it so it gave it a little something extra. I know the wood looks a little rough in some of the pictures but I didnt want to take away the character it had recieved over the years.

Sides are Mahogany
legs are Cedar with Oak plugs
Lid is Pecky Cypress

14 1/2” high without the legs by 36” long and 16” wide

finish is Laquer with the exception of the lid which is poly which was the original finish and with the carvings I didnt want to take the chance of messing it up when I stripped the rest of the peice so I left the original finish and just cleaned it up and put on 4 new coats.
Kicking myself for not taking before pics

sorry for the long story but it was great to be able to restore something me and my dad built together.

-- Joe, Florida