From Trash to Treasure: My Summer Camp Trunk Makeover to End-of-Bed Storage

So I have this trunk...

And I've had it for a million years, ever since I went to summer camp & saw all the kids had trunks except me! So I took $10 I earned from babysitting & bought this one at Wal-Mart sometime in the early 1990s. It is busted up & cracked from me lounging on it at boarding school, but I really wanted to keep it. I decided re-do it so it looked nice & set about searching the Internet for ideas. That's when I came across this post at www.pbjstories.com. Now, my trunk is in nowhere the same condition as hers, but what-the-hey, it couldn't get any worse!

So I went to Home Depot & bought some legs. 

I stuck them into a carboard drawer so I could spray paint them 

with Rust-Oleum's Oil-Rubbed-Bronze.

Next it was time to clean the trunk so it could be painted, so out came my 

favorite cleaning products, baby wipes & Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.

Then I realized how bad the crack was...

I got out some tools that I thought might reinforce the crack. I know I can't do 

the filing trunk that she did, but I at least wanted to make it a little more sturdy, 

just to hold blankets or pillows at the bottom of the bed in our guest room.

I didn't take any pictures of the fix because it wasn't as easy as I thought 

& was really just frustrating...

Then after the cleaning was done, I primed it... brown! WHY BROWN???? 

It is going to be white! 

Maybe I thought I was going to distress it, but I didn't... Soooo, whatever...

I spray painted it with Rust-Oleum's Heirloom White.

Then I flipped that sucker upside down...

& drilled some pilot holes for the legs.

I used construction adhesive & coated the tops of the legs & screws with it.

I stuck them through the pilot holes in the bottom of the trunk & made sure that they 

were extra sturdy with a bolt on each one inside the trunk. The post at PB&J Stories 

didn't use bolts, but I didn't think that just adhesive would be sturdy enough.

Finally, the whole thing was coated with Rust-Oleum's Semi-gloss Polyurethane 

spray paint & set out to dry, which is why the closures are not clasped 

& flipped up in the pictures.

I'll post the finished pictures once it's set up in the room. 

Yay! I saved my trunk!

"It was more than discovering something that I loved to do - 

It was discovering someone I had always been." 

 ~ Natalie ;-*