Magpie Monday ... "Free" coffee table / chest

I thought I'd do a Magpie Monday post, been meaning to join in for ages, just never seem to get the timing right.

Me and my wife spend time looking through charity shops and such like when ever we get the chance, you find some great stuff, and more often than not it's better made and will last twice as long as a lot of the things you can buy today.

Furniture is one of those things, years ago people made furniture from real wood, non of this laminated chip board stuff, and they used real carpentry to put things together, and not just a load of screws.

So on the way back from the city a few weeks ago I came across this bit of furniture in one of our local charity shops.

You can just make out the label, it says free !

Yes that's right it was free, apparently it had been in the shop for a while at various prices and no one bought it, yes it needed a little tlc, but even so I'd have bought it had I seen it, but on the day I went past they had decided it had to go, so they put it outside with a big "free" label on it, and no one took it ! I passed the shop well after lunch time and it had sat there all morning and part way into the afternoon, why did no one take it ? I'm still wondering.

It's a chest, at least that's what we call it, it now sits in our living room and acts as a coffee table, desk for the kids to work at, a foot rest when we are watching a film, oh and as it opens (the drawers don't open) it also gets used as storage. Old furniture may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like it.

I had to sand it down, all over which didn't take as long as I thought it would, then I used a natural beeswax polish on it, to give it a protective coat and feed the wood, I normally use the beeswax polish for turned wood, but it worked well on the chest.

More pictures - 

Not the best picture.

And that's about it, a perfectly good piece of furniture for nothing, free ! and you can't really get much cheaper than that, all it needed was a sand and a good coat of something to feed the wood, a similar piece of furniture would cost quite a bit now, especially for solid wood.

It's worth looking out for bits of furniture in charity shops, you never know when you'll find an absolute bargain :-)

Thanks for reading.