So, the house came with an old wardrobe in it. Battered and tatty - with a set of old australian encyclopedia in it no less. Question was - can it be used, or do we get rid?
D'uh.
Several ideas came and went - it's carcass was not strong enough to build shelves into, so we had to come up with a different plan.. or seven.
Anyway - here we go.
This is the wardrobe as was - except without it's doors. Foolishly we only thought to start documenting this after we had begun. Ho Hum. So, we took the doors off, and spent a few afternoons sanding the layers of old varnish off them, and the rest of the 'drobe. It's sides are so thin, only veneer really and the back.. well...
It had a big patched up mess of a hole in it. The back of the 'drobe itself was screwed on with a myriad of tiny tiny screws all totally rusted into the wood and which broke apart when we tried to get them out. What to do now? Kick the back out of course...
That... wasn't the best of ideas. No way was it all coming off, and if it did - the whole thing was liable to collapse. So off we went to the massive DIY store to get some hardboard cut to put over the back panel. Course, I managed to do the maths in a hurry so what we got cut didnt fit - too small for the back. But - no fear - Ducko with a saw and a big tube of woodglue and the too small to cover the entire back on the outside fitted nicely onto the inside of the back. Back of the wardrobes gonna be against a wall anyway...
Next came some sums... how much stuff would we need to cover the insides? Whole lotta maths. Of course.. in the end - the - fuckit that'll do - came to the fore - along with costs. There's only so many of the pretty little envelopes I could afford.
Speaking of... here they are. Chinese lucky money envelopes. Most of these are designed for the new year - some for weddings. All for good luck, prosperity, and ever so pretty. Can't see all of them here, but there are five designs as you will see in time. The Koi, the Crystanthemum, The Man, The Oranges and the Phoenix and Dragon. All had to be slit open with the blade of a craft knife, Ducko using the knife, me just one of the blades. We must have looked very dodgy slitting open the little envelopes.
Here, you can see the new backboard - the hammer is there as this was part of an idea that failed - building a new frame into the carcass of the 'drobe to build shelves into. After a lot of hammering - and a massive headache - as hammering, when your head inside a big box that reverbarates.. gets very VERY loud, and was all pointless, as the nails just fell out of the old hard dry timber of the 'drobe's frame, and no amount of instant grab adhesive or nails was gonna help. So.. that idea flew out of the window, and something much more interesting took it's place. More on that later..
For now, we come over all Blue Peter / Art Attack and start glueing the sliced up envelopes to the inside side of the 'drobe. This was all a bit of an experiment - as each new mix of PVA and water was slightly different in consistancy, that and it turned out that despite looking about the same size, the Phoenix and Dragon envelopes were actually a good bit bigger than all the others. some fancy fiddling, and they got their own stripe, with the other four designs going on more or less in sequence. More when Ducko was handing them to me to glue, and less when he went to make the dinner, and I picked up whatever was nearest in the piles.
Here we are a bit further on.. trying to keep all the lines straight, all the glue where it should be, and all the air and glue bubbles pushed out. Though, as hard as we tried, there are still a lot! They crept in when we weren't looking I'm sure.
One side done! Still sticky and wet with glue...
And Dry! In lovely golden afternoon sunlight no less. Yes, here you can see the wrinkles in the envelopes. But, I would argue now that they add character. Anything else and it may as well all have been one sheet of paper.
Here, we have moved on a bit, more than half of the back covered now too, as well as the righthandside on the shelves that you can't really see. The gap at the bottom of the left hand side's there as it took a good deal of thinking about as to how to cover that bit, the wood of the floor there and the base of the sidewall was broken, and the carcass of the 'drobe had to be worked around. We get there - never fear.
See! Here's the built in shelves - they are very bizzare, as they are not attatched to the floor of the wardrobe in any way. All quite flimsy and light, they may have rested on the floor once, but it's bowed over the decades and now they float free. You can't really tell from this photo - but each shelf was covered in a single design - fortuitously there are five! For added luck, one glued on also contains a coin. So the 'drobe, already lucky not to have ended up in a skip, should be luckier still.
Insides... DONE!
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