Last week I decided it was finally time to do something about the old icebox we've had sitting in the house for 20 years. A friend gave it to Vicki, who was actually grateful for it and thought I should restore it.
I have never been fond of it. It was ugly, with missing pieces of trim, and the doors had no latches and they would swing open and wait for me to walk by and crack my shins on them.
But it was a gift so it sat waiting for me to ...
It was in bad shape when we got it and just got worse over the years. A piece of one door had broken off; fortunately the piece was kept and I glued it back on. The door latches were all gone, and someone had smeared some kind of finish on it right over all the dirt and crap. There was no way I was going to "restore" this thing, but I did want to put latches on the doors.
Judging by all the screw holes, it apparently had more that one set of door latches on it over the years. Getting new latches was a problem because this thing is so non-standard. The space between the doors is narrower and the distance the door stands proud of the frame is 1/2". All the repro and most of the used latches I could find had a 3/8" offset and were too wide to fit between the doors. I spent years keeping my eye out for replacement latches.
I came across a full set of odd latches at a flea market that I thought would work. When I got them home I discovered the offset was closer to 1" and they were too wide to fit between the doors.
So I cut them down so they would fit. That left the problem that they stood out from the door by 1/2".
I found an old piece of 3/4" oak flooring in the barn and ran it through the planer to bring it down to 1/2". I cut out these blocks to make spacers and ran them through the router to give them some character. After sanding and a couple of coats of shellac they were beautiful - like they belonged on a nice piece of furniture, not this ugly old hulk. The latches are solid brass and would have polished up nice, but shiny brass would look out of place on this old thing.
I scuffed the blocks up with steel wool and rubbed a little black stain on them to make their finish look like the rest of the box - ie like 5hit. That was hard to do, because that glossy shellaced oak looked beautiful. I don't know why the right hand handles are bent over like that. I have no idea what they were made to fit.
Before installing the latches I scrubbed the box down with soap and water and started waxing it. I put the first coat of wax on with 0000 steel wool, then used a rag. I'm on the 3rd coat now, with at least 2 more to go.