My wife came home from Florida with this old chest she bought off Facebook Marketplace for $20.00. She liked it because it was made from pine and had an old-world look to it. She asked me if I could repair it so it could be used as a coffee table.

The chest had nice handcut dovetail joints on the front with really steep angles. So steep, they look like equilateral triangles. However, the back of the chest is just fastened together with a rabbet and some cut nails. I guess the craftsman who built the chest was tired of cutting so many dovetails that he opted for something easier for the back.

The bottom of the chest had a horrible repair to the back. Because the base was so tall, the wood failed and broke away. Somebody came in and simply installed L wood brackets to the back and screwed them in place with drywall screws.

Flipping the chest on its top, I broke off the terrible repair and cut the front feet of the chest to 18″ tall. I then took the off cuts and glued them to back of the feet that were missing.

Once everything was glued, I flipped the chest back over on its feet and checked how it looked. The narrower base was more pleasing to the eye and less prone to breaking since the feet were no longer so tall.

I then worked on the lid shaving away the inside of the front trim so that it would close around the chest. After a few minutes of shaving, the lid closed fine when I reinstalled it.

The chest now serves us well as a coffee table in our screened in porch. Hell of a coffee table for $20.00, and you can barely notice it has been repaired. Anita is ordering old looking chest handles for the sides as we both feel it would look nicer with them.