Refinish-Toy Box

We have a bit of a toy situation at our house.  The toys all stay down stairs in our unfinished area we have designated as a "toy room".  As a result, they don't get played with very much and McKay doesn't like to go down there (and neither does his mom), when it is cold.  So I have been keeping some upstairs in the living room for him to play with.  It drives me crazy to have them all over, but I haven't really know what to do with them.  Over the summer I found this wooden chest that had been covered over with vinyl and was in serious need of a make over.

I actually bought it at the same yard sale that I got this chair at (I really am going to do a chair upholstery tutorial, I think I finally decided on the fabric I want to recover my chair in).  It was so grimy (as was the chair) and had outlines of hammers and wrenches on the top where they must have sat for years.  This actually only grosses me out a little, more than anything I love to make it look nice and show some TLC to a shabby piece of furniture. 

I am a bit new to the yard sale thing (and I have fallen in love with it), but I am not always good at talking people down.  My sister helped me out and we got this baby for $3.  When I got it home, I found after stripping it down that it has to be so old!  It is a solid wood chest and the nails that hold it together look like they were homemade.  It is actually a cool piece of furniture, but definitely needed some help. 

The basic rule that I always follow when recovering something is to take picture (although I didn't on this one because it was recovered so horribly), and just try to put it back how you saw it.  I take off the original fabric one piece at a time and then use it as my pattern.  I couldn't do that for a lot of this because it was crazy, but that is the idea for most things.   Taking things apart is usually the worst part, but I actually like it.  It is just time consuming.

This is what the chest looks like now.  I found the fabric I covered it in at Ikea.
 
I put some pillows to across the top to keep my boys off it (I know they will want to jump off it, my brain is starting to think like a boy), it is so old I think I need to protect it a little (which probably isn't a good thing in the long run).  Josh was a trooper to help me with it and we finally have somewhere to put all of those toys!