Cleaning Old Trunks
The drawback to being a writer, editor, and professor is that sometimes I live too much in my head. Getting out hiking or traveling is fun because it forces me out of my head and into my body. Right now I have a new project to work my body and relax my brain — cleaning these two old trunks I bought via Craigslist.
One’s a large flat-top trunk and the other is a smaller steamer trunk, circa 1870s-1920. They’re in reasonable condition, but I’m told they were stored in a shed in Massachusetts until being carted here to California, so there’s a lot of rust and corrosion on the iron and brass hardware, and dirt everywhere. My current project is to get these cleaned up so I can bring them inside.
But wait — isn’t this clutter? Bite your tongue! This is storage masquerading as furniture! I’ll be using the big trunk as a coffee table, most likely, and the smaller one will go in a picturesque stack of old-fashioned boxes and antique luggage that I use to store office supplies, my DVD player, etc. I plan to move a variety of tools and crafts supplies that are currently living in plastic containers in my closet into these trunks, thus ridding my apartment of more icky plastic, creating space in the closets, and making it that much faster for me to pack up and move.
I’ve been reading a variety of trunk restoration sites to learn how to clean these up. I don’t want to do a complete restoration, but I don’t want them leaving funny stains on the rug or strange smells in the air, either. At the moment I’m tackling the very, very rusted iron with Naval Jelly, wire brush, and steel wool, and the tarnished brass with Noxon. Once the hardware is relatively clean, I’ll tackle washing the old painted canvas and stripping and oiling the wood. It’s good mindless physical labor, although breathing in the various toxic fumes and clouds of rust can get pretty intense, even out on my balcony. On the other hand, killing off brain cells is one way to resolve the “living too much in my head” problem….
drupagliassotti @ June 12, 2008